


Thy Neighbor's Burden

by Twilight Fang (Asthenos)



Category: Invasion (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Beta Derek, Human Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Sub Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-30 22:59:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8552836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asthenos/pseuds/Twilight%20Fang
Summary: (This is a Teen Wolf / Invasion crossover)Beacon Hills has its hidden secrets, while Homestead has its own, and neither town is willing to share information.  Stiles has just graduated from college and is about to start his new career as a deputy for the Beacon Hills County Sheriff's Department.  To celebrate, Sheriff Stilinski takes his son to the Everglades National Park in Homestead for some father-son bonding time... that ends with something life-altering happening to Stiles.  Following up on the incident, Sheriff Tom Underlay and Park Ranger Russell Varon pay Beacon Hills a visit, only to fall prey to a new villain in town.  Stiles and Russell must ultimately learn to work together in order to protect Derek and Tom from the evil that has targeted them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Writing multiple ideas at the same time spares me from writer's block, so please don't be alarmed to see yet another WIP Teen Wolf fic. They will all be continued at random intervals.
> 
> I love both Invasion and Teen Wolf and thought that it would be interesting to combine the supernatural elements of both series to see what I could come up with. If anyone does read this and is interested in me continuing it, please do let me know. I really appreciate all comments because it encourages me to write more. :)
> 
> It doesn't matter if you have never seen the series Invasion because I will explain all the important elements as I go through the story.

The water was so still it was almost like it was frozen in time. Not a single ripple stirred its surface… until Stiles eagerly leaned over the edge of the boat to try and look to the bottom of the cove.

 

“Hey! Watch that you don’t tip this thing over,” Sheriff Stilinski warned his son as he shifted his weight in the opposite direction to balance the boat out. “I can’t afford to pay the rental shop whatever it costs to replace an aluminum row boat.”

 

Thinking that his father was exaggerating the value of a row boat, Stiles smirked as he turned back to regard the elder Stilinski’s serious expression. “Come on, Dad. How much can a row boat possibly cost? Fifty bucks, at most?”

 

“It’s aluminum, Son. Try well over a thousand.”

 

 _Shit!_ _Well, in that case_ … Stiles sat back in the boat, hooked his oar in the proper position so that it wouldn’t drop into the water – and cost them however much an oar costs to replace – and flipped open the lid of their nifty blue lightweight cooler. “Lunchtime?” He asked hopefully.

 

“We just had breakfast two hours ago. You’ve been back all of two weeks and you’re already eating me out of house and home,” Stilinski complained with an aggravated sigh.

 

“Everything that I ate was on the verge of expiring, so the way I see it, you should be thanking me for cleaning out the fridge and cupboards for you.” Beaming with positive energy, Stiles shoved his hand into the cooler and pulled out the beef pies that his father had picked up from the deli on the edge of town earlier that morning. Passing one to his father, he unwrapped his own, sank his teeth into it, and made a pleased sound to indicate that it was really delicious.

 

Stiles couldn’t remember the last time that he’d hung out with his father like this. It was nice being able to spend some quality father-son bonding time with his old man now that he was all done with college, especially since they only had another week left before Stiles became an official deputy for the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department. Although he had a pretty vague idea of what to expect working under his father, he still felt awkward about converting his personal relationship into a professional one during working hours. Knowing his father, Stilinski would probably give him a hard time in front of his underlings just to show that there would be no favoritism or conflicts of interest while Stiles was working under him. Well, that was fine by him. He’d signed up for a serious career in law enforcement and that’s what he expected to get.

 

“Homestead meat pies are much better than the ones in Beacon Hills,” Stiles said enthusiastically as he finished devouring the meat pie and dug around looking for the turkey pie next. They’d driven over a few counties to visit the quaint little town of Homestead this morning, mainly because his father had wanted him to experience the beauty of the Everglades National Park. Compared to Beacon Hills, Homestead was an old fashioned, underdeveloped town with a minimum population, nearly no crime, and limited to one of everything. Unlike Beacon Hills, in Homestead there was only one family restaurant, one deli, one church, one shopping mall, and one movie theater. There were plenty of things that it was lacking as well, like any night clubs, carnivals, or werewolves. Stiles figured that the good citizens of Homestead were probably better off remaining blissfully ignorant of the last one. The only interesting thing about Homestead was the Everglades National Park – fondly referred to as _the Glades_ – on the outskirts of town.

 

“You’ve certainly bulked up while you were training in college,” Stilinski commented as he finished off his meat pie, looking surprised when Stiles began to hungrily munch away at the turkey pie that should have been for their afternoon snack.

 

“I wouldn’t call it _bulking up_ , Dad. I just put on a bit of muscle, that’s all,” Stiles replied, trying to be modest about the muscles that had taken him forever to build up over the past three years. It had taken a lot of motivation – and bribery in the form of late night donuts – to drag his ass into the gym every night after a full day of studying just to lift weights and chase an imaginary carrot on the treadmill for ten virtual kilometers of agony.  

 

“So…”

 

 _Here it comes!_ Stiles braced himself for another one of his father’s embarrassing inquiries into his college love life. He really ought to make up a fictional girlfriend to throw his father off the scent of his loner lifestyle. But that would require an imagination, and with all the chaos that Stiles had encountered during his high school years, his imagination was all tapped out.

 

“I ran into Derek Hale the other day…”

 

 _Derek!_ That was not the topic Stiles had expected his father to start out with. And it had been so unnecessary to add the _Hale_ to Derek’s name. Like there were any other Dereks in Beacon Hills that Stiles knew, or gave a damn about. Stiles felt his heartbeat rev into overdrive at the mention of the sexy wolf’s name and automatically looked out across the cove so that his father wouldn’t notice the burning emotion that lit up his amber-brown eyes. “Oh?” He asked, keeping his interest as tame as possible. “How is he nowadays?” He hadn’t even heard that Derek had come back from Mexico. They’d lost touch after Derek had evolved into a wolf capable of shifting at will. And not a half-assed shift like Scott McCall and the other wolves were capable of. No, Derek was the only one who could actually _become_ a wolf, with four furry paws, a bushy wolfish tail, and a sleek, glossy ebony coat of fur. That had to have taken some getting used to.

 

“You’re not going to believe this, but Derek bought Mrs. Baxter’s old house.”

 

“ _Mrs. Baxter’s house?!_ You mean the _haunted_ house down by the park?!”

 

“That’s exactly the one I mean,” Stilinski said with a grin.

 

“What the hell would he want with that old crumbling piece of shit?!”

 

“Is that the way the rest of the kids speak in college?” Stilinski asked disapprovingly.

 

“Oops. Sorry.” _Note to self. No more talking like a hooligan._ “Seriously though, why would Derek want to move into a haunted house?”

 

“Probably because the property was dirt cheap with all those haunted house rumors floating around. Anyway, he bought it, renovated it, and turned the first floor into a café. He spends the afternoons serving tea and cakes to old ladies, and entertains a more professional clientele after office hours.”

 

“Derek makes tea? And cakes?!” That sexy dark haired, green eyed heartthrob with the most mouth-watering muscular body had become a masculine version of Martha Stewart?!

 

“That’s what I thought,” Stilinski said with a shrug. “But he’s really into it. I went down there last week to see what all the fuss was about and I’m telling you, werewolf or not, that man knows his cuisine. It was like being in an authentic tea shop at high noon. His bakewell tarts and buttermilk scones are out of this world.”

 

Trying not to drool over the mention of tarts and scones, Stiles casually brought up what had been on his mind for the past few years. “Is he seeing someone?”

 

“Not that I know of. But he did ask about you.”

 

“Huh?” Had his father just answered a question about Derek’s love life by sticking a reference to Stiles in there? Did his father even know how badly those two sentences flowed together? “Really?” Now _that_ hadn’t sounded too desperate and obvious.

 

“He did indeed. In fact, he wanted to know if--.”

 

Stilinski never got the chance to finish his sentence. And Stiles didn’t get to play out his fantasies about Derek because he was suddenly too busy fighting for his life. Something had hit the boat from underneath, off the starboard bow, with enough force to throw Stiles, Stilinski, and all their belongings into the water. Who knew that sharks lived in the Glades! Stiles splashed around in the water, bursting up for air as he heard his father do the same on the other side of the boat. Only, he was dragged back under by something that had ensnared his ankle. Struggling with the sharp, coiling object, he glared down into the depths of the water to see something large, orange, and glowing. And that was the last thing he remembered before he blacked out.

 

* * *

 

“HEY! OVER HERE!” Stilinski waved his arms frantically as soon as he saw the Homestead Sheriff’s cruiser pull up onto the beach beside his own Beacon Hills County Sheriff’s SUV. His clothes were soaking wet and plastered to his skin, making him feel horribly uncomfortable, but it was nothing compared to the terror that he was feeling over his missing son. He’d searched the water around the boat for a few minutes before realizing that he couldn’t perform a search and rescue on his own, which had prompted him to return to his vehicle to radio for help. Luckily for him, he’d automatically gotten a hold of Sheriff Tom Underlay, who had also been in the Glades at the time. Sheriff Underlay’s response time had been phenomenal, along with his calm and rational approach to the situation. He had instructed Stilinski to remain on the beach so that they wouldn’t wind up with two victims in the water instead of one. And then he’d given him an ETA of four minutes!

 

When the sheriff got out of the car, Stilinski was glad that he had spoken to the man over the radio before meeting him in person because he looked a little too polished and arrogant at first glance. He was younger than Stilinski had expected for a sheriff responsible for such a backwards county, tall with blondish-brown hair, slender, and incredibly fit. Not like some of the lazy men who chose to police sleepy towns so that they could nap in their cruisers or spend their days frequenting the local diner for handouts. The Homestead sheriff’s uniform was very different from the one that Stilinski was wearing. Whereas Beacon Hills had modern uniforms with comfortable beige short-sleeved button-down shirts, tear-resistant pants, and warm matching green jackets that zipped up to the collar, Underlay’s white long-sleeved dressed shirt looked pristine and overly starched. He was even wearing a white undershirt underneath the shirt on a scorching 32 degrees afternoon. His slacks looked just as uncomfortable, made from a thick brown material with two yellow stripes running down the outside of either leg. And Underlay did not carry his firearm in a modern holster. He wore a utility belt over his narrow hips that bounced around with the weight of the gun, a walkie talkie, ammo, and hell knows what else he had attached to it.

 

“Sheriff Stilinski,” Underlay greeted as he hurriedly got out of his vehicle. “I’m going to need your son’s name as well as a physical description.”

 

“His name is Stiles. He’s roughly five foot-ten, slim, with short brown hair, brown eyes…” Stilinski paused when another man got out of the sheriff’s car on the passenger’s side and began to strip. The sheriff’s companion was taller and brawnier than Underlay, with short dark brown hair, brown eyes, and a dark beard that he kept down to a stubble. It wasn’t too hard to guess the man’s occupation because he was wearing half the uniform of a Everglades National Park Ranger, albeit in a rather disrespectful way on top of a mud-stained t-shirt and a ripped pair of jeans.

 

“Russell Varon is a senior park ranger, as well as a very strong swimmer,” Underlay explained quickly without bothering to turn around to acknowledge Varon. “Now I need you to focus, Sheriff. Where exactly did your boat capsize?”

 

“Right there,” Stilinski said as he pointed to a spot at a distance from the furthest visible tree. The boat was long gone, having sunk to the bottom of the cove after it had taken on too much water. As soon as he pointed out Stiles’ last known whereabouts, Varon took off splashing into the water in his briefs, aiming for that exact location.

 

“Okay. I need you to stay here and keep an eye on the water. Our only hospital is on the other side of town so it might take a while for the ambulance to arrive.” And then Underlay was removing his utility belt and sunglasses to hand both to Stilinski, disrobing as efficiently – if not a bit more gracefully – as Varon had. “Try to remain calm,” Underlay advised sympathetically as he gazed at him with his piercing blue eyes.

 

“Uh… yeah… calm…” Stilinski could only watch in paralyzed horror as Underlay followed in Varon’s wake, slicing cleanly into the water as soon as it was deep enough to dive into.


	2. Chapter 2

_Fifteen minutes. It’s too long…_ Russell treaded water a distance from shore, turning to the right, and then to the left, in search of a brown haired youth resembling Sheriff Stilinski. But he couldn’t see anything in the water. No air bubbles. No signs of clothing. Nothing. The only thing he had come across in the water was an empty plastic cooler floating on its side.

 

“Ranger Varon!”

 

Russell glanced back towards the shore where Sheriff Stilinski was up to his knees in the cove water and waving frantically. Now what? Had the sheriff spotted his son? “Yeah?!” Russell shouted back.

 

“Your sheriff has been under for far too long!”

 

“Tom’s fine!” He replied, about to dive back down again, when Stilinski’s tone became harsh and authoritative.

 

“He’s been under for sixteen minutes! No man can hold his breath for sixteen minutes! You need to pull him out!”

 

Wonderful! Just wonderful. _Way to go, Tom,_ Russell mentally berated his friend for managing to attract attention with his mermaid act. While Russell might be fully aware of Tom’s little secret, an outsider like Stilinski would have no clue what it meant when a resident of Homestead went into the water and failed to surface again after a reasonable amount of time. Still, fifteen minutes was a long time to go without resurfacing for air if Tom was over-expending his energy in the search for the junior Stilinski. “I’ve got it!” Russell insisted, diving back under to continue the search for Stiles, not Tom. Although he was worried about his friend overdoing it, their primary concern was finding a drowned victim while he could still be revived.

 

If Tom needed help… No, Tom would never ask for help. Adjusting his search pattern, Russell kept looking for Stiles while keeping an eye out for Tom at the same time.

 

 _Twenty-five minutes…_ In the background, Russell could hear the sirens from the ambulance, along with the sounds of another body splashing into the water beside him. Stilinski was still aiding in the search, despite the fact that he was apparently not a strong swimmer, or in his right state of mind due to the panic setting in. _Come on, Tom…_

 

When it was nearing the thirty minute mark, Russell saw Tom come up for air near the empty cooler, a few meters to his right. He looked at him expectantly, and then swore when he noticed the pathetic way the sheriff was moving his arms through the water. Pushing off in Tom’s direction, Russell came up behind him and looped an arm around his chest. “Go limp,” he instructed, feeling the way Tom’s chest was rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to get air into his lungs.

 

“No! He’s still out there,” Tom protested, about to go back under again.

 

“If you pass out in the water, we’ll have two drowned victims to recover,” Russell said angrily as he began to tow Tom back to shore. As much as he wanted to reunite Stilinski with his son, he was not willing to allow Tom to sacrifice himself in order to do so. Russell himself was exhausted by the time they reached the shore, letting a medic fit Tom with an oxygen mask when he sank onto the beach with him. He didn’t say a word when the medic passed him another oxygen mask, holding it over his mouth and nose, concentrating on just breathing. He held onto Tom for a few seconds longer than was necessary, just to reassure himself that the sheriff was okay, and then looked up into the disbelieving face of Stilinski.

 

“He was under for close to thirty minutes,” Stilinski hissed in accusation, keeping his voice low but his expression stern as hell. “That’s not possible.”

 

There were now professional divers combing the cove for any sign of Stiles, and the ambulance was on standby. Tom was sitting huddled by his side, wrapped in a blanket that the medic had draped over him, but was otherwise unresponsive and in a sort of daze. Adjusting back from the depths of the water to the fresh air of the land always took its toll on Tom, especially when a life was at stake and he had pushed himself past his limits.

 

“I think that the stress is getting to you,” Russell said calmly. “He came up for air a few times.”

 

“Don’t bullshit me,” Stilinski growled, breathing harshly from an adrenalin rush that just wouldn’t die down. “If he was under the water for that long, he must’ve seen it.”

 

“Seen what?”

 

“That orange thing that knocked our boat out of the water,” Stilinski accused as he began to raise his voice.

 

There was only one orange thing that Russell knew of when referencing the water in the Glades, and that was not a creature that he wanted to acknowledge or have outsiders poking into. “Look, the divers are doing everything they can in order to find your son,” he said in an attempt to placate Stilinski. “Tom is going to need to rest before you ask him about what he saw in the water.” Just to be sure, Russell glanced over at his companion to see that he was inhaling steadily from the oxygen mask, but his eyes were closed in utter exhaustion as he leaned up against Russell’s shoulder for support.

 

Stilinski took a step back, ran both hands over his face in distress and then composed himself as best as he could. “I’m sorry… I know you were both trying to help… I just… I need to find Stiles.”

 

To Stilinski’s credit, he remained in control of himself as he stood there watching the rescue team do their thing, but Russell could sense that the sheriff was cracking on the inside. Having a son a few years younger than Stiles, Russell could sympathize with what it must feel like fearing the worst for your child. He’d almost lost his boy to the orange creatures in the water last year… He knew what they were capable of, as did Tom.

 

They continued to observe the progress of the divers until the sun began to set. Then Russell helped Tom into the back of the ambulance so that they could change back into their clothes. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” Russell asked in dismay as he tried not to show too much of an interest in Tom’s backside as the sheriff pulled his trousers back on.

 

“I searched the entire cove,” Tom said dryly, his voice weak from the lack of oxygen in his lungs.

 

“ _Thirty minutes_ ,” Russell muttered as he listened to how wrecked Tom sounded. “First of all, you should have come up regularly for air, you know, at least made an effort to appear normal. Second, to cover the entire cove in thirty minutes is pushing it, even for you.” Picking up Tom’s discarded oxygen mask in annoyance, Russell pulled it back down over the sheriff’s face and pushed him to sit down on the stretcher. “Stay here and relax, you stubborn idiot.” That would kill two birds with one stone. Tom would get the time he needed to recover, and Russell could keep Stilinski far away from his friend so that he could not be questioned. The last thing he wanted was for Tom to be interrogated in his condition. Who knew what might slip past those damn kissable lips.

 

* * *

 

Sheriff Stilinski had been dealing with werewolves, supernatural murderers, cursed corpses, possessed souls and so on, for far too long to let someone like Russell Varon pull the wool over his eyes. There wasn’t anything bloody wrong with his observational skills or his powers of deduction. Underlay had not come up for air once in the thirty minutes that he had spent searching for Stiles, while Varon had popped in and out of the water like a flapping seal. Varon might have been a very strong swimmer, but Underlay’s grace and skill underwater was unprecedented. The sheriff of Homestead was either not entirely human, or genetically enhanced in one way or the other, Stilinski was sure of it. And Varon was doing everything in his power to protect the sheriff and cover it up. If Stiles’ life had not been at stake, Stilinski would have taken the two of them aside for a serious round of questioning at his earliest convenience.

 

“Oh God…” Stilinski buried his face in his hands and forced himself to stay on top of the situation. He couldn’t give into his worst fears, not now, not when Stiles was relying on him to remain in control of the situation. Maybe Stiles had washed ashore a distance from the beach… But the Homestead Sheriff’s Department, much like Beacon Hills, did not have any service dogs employed with them so there was no way of searching by scent.

 

It was completely dark now and the men and women on the beach and in the water were having even less luck searching with their high powered flashlights. Out of the corner of his eye, Stilinski felt a presence and whirled around to catch sight of Underlay walking down towards the other side of the beach. His partner was nowhere to be seen, so Stilinski silently followed his Homestead counterpart, sensing that the purposeful way in which the man was walking meant that he’d seen something. No. He couldn’t have seen anything. It was too dark. Rather, Underlay must have _sensed_ something because he was now walking faster, heading back down towards the beach. Could he have found Stiles?! Saying a quick prayer, Stilinski shadowed Underlay down to an area of the beach that was covered in moss, aquatic plants, and a large mangrove tree.

 

When Underlay reached the mangrove tree, he knelt down to it and pulled the blanket away from his shoulders. He leaned forward and spread the blanket out on what looked like a black section of ground. Only it was lumpy and had a head of messy brown hair attached to it.

 

“Stiles!” Stilinski rushed forward, clumsily stumbling in the sand, and startling Underlay into nearly falling into the shallow water that was lapping up against the roots of the tree. “Is he okay?!”

 

“He’s breathing,” Underlay said with confidence, appearing less fatigued than he had when Varon had dragged him back onto the beach.

 

“Thank God! Thank you, Sheriff! Thank you!” Stilinski couldn’t have cared less if Underlay was a fish at that point. To hell with whatever secret Underlay was keeping with his abnormal scuba diving skills. The only thing that mattered was that Stiles was safe and alive thanks to whatever premonition had lured Underlay to this particular spot. If it hadn’t been for Underlay, the search party wouldn’t have even approached this area until the morning. And by that time, Stiles could have died from exposure or shock.

 

“It’s Tom,” Underlay said warmly, obviously pleased that he’d been able to find Stilinski’s missing son, regardless of how unorthodox his methods may have seemed.

 

“Tom… why is he naked?” Stilinski had pulled back the blanket to check on Stiles’s physical condition when he’d noticed that alarming fact. Although his son had come to the cove dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a loud, obnoxious t-shirt advertising for some loser band that had never made it big, he was now completely nude.

 

“I think that we’d better let the medics take a look at him,” Tom said wisely, although something about his tone said that he knew a lot more than he was letting on.


	3. Chapter 3

“Can we skip the instant noodles for lunch today?” Stiles asked as he sprang up from the kitchen table and made his way over to the sink. Tipping his glass under the faucet, he filled it to the brim with cool, freshly filtered water, and gulped it down without so much as blinking an eye. And then, to make matters even stranger, he refilled his glass once more, and emptied it again. It was as if he were trying to quench an insatiable thirst for which there was no explanation.

 

Stilinski looked up at his son, thanking the heavens that he still had a son to look up at, and forced himself to keep acting normal. To not let Stiles’ newfound fixation with water disturb or distract him. Because it was not only the drinking water that seemed to fascinate his son. Stiles had also developed the obsession with playing with the faucet on the shower stall, having spent well over an hour preening himself in it this morning. Last night had been the two-hour soak in the bath. What would this evening bring? Joyful frolicking through the sprinkler on the front lawn? “Do you have other plans?”

 

“As a matter of fact, I do. I’m going to pay Derek a visit to congratulate him on his new café,” Stiles said enthusiastically. But it was with a very mature enthusiasm that was lacking his usual spastic charm. Come to think of it, had Stiles even taken his Adderall today? He was acting as if he had taken a double dose when Stilinski was pretty darn sure that his son hadn’t been anywhere near his prescription medicine this morning. Usually if Stiles skipped his meds for a day, he would be hyperactive and irrational by the time evening came by. Stilinski had so many things on his mind that he trusted his son to dutifully take his medicine without needing to be reminded. So he must’ve taken it with one of those glasses of water when Stilinski hadn’t been paying attention. Why else would he be acting so laidback and normal?

 

“Oh… Well, I suppose that should be okay,” Stilinski agreed carefully.

 

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Stiles asked with a look of sheer innocence, stocking up on his fourth glass of water, and eliminating any future threat of dehydration.

 

“You almost drowned yesterday,” Stilinski reminded his son. “I just want to make sure that you’re not suffering from PTSD… or something like that.” But if anyone was suffering from post traumatic stress, it was Stilinski and not Stiles. After Tom had found Stiles down by that tree, the medics had converged on his location to check his vital signs. And, within minutes, Stiles had regained consciousness, all bright and full of positive energy, inquisitively asking why he had suddenly become so popular with the nurses. The medics hadn’t been able to find anything wrong with Stiles – at all – which was strange because they’d made a note of there not being a single scar on his son’s body when he knew damn fine that there ought to be several. Stiles had been possessed by an evil kitsune spirit, attacked by a chimera werewolf, and been in a few car accidents. He had scars alright! Some of them more recent and visible than others, but enough that Stilinski had begun to lose track. But then to hear the medics declare that Stiles was in perfect condition without a mark on him…! Stilinski didn’t know what to think.

 

“I assure you I am completely stress-free,” Stiles said gleefully as he began to spin his thumb over his iPhone screen.

 

“Now what are you doing?”

 

“I can’t visit Derek empty-handed. I’m ordering him a nice flowery plant that he can display in his front window.”

 

“Huh?” Stiles was ordering Derek flowers? Or plant flowers? Whatever! Since when did Stiles give flowers to anybody? As far as Stilinski knew, Stiles hadn’t even tried to contact Derek in all the years that he’d been in college. Whenever Derek’s name came up, Stiles either acted awkward and confused, or lovesick and moody. It was no secret that his son had been pining after the dark, handsome – yet angst-ridden – young man for the last five years. Stilinski would be remiss in his parenting if he didn’t notice who his son had the hots for. But what was with the sudden urge to rush on down to Derek’s nameless café to check up on him? With flowers?! “Does Derek know you’re coming?”

 

“Of course not. I want it to be a surprise.” Smiling to himself about hell knows what, Stiles backed into the counter as he prepared to fill up his glass for the fifth time, and accidentally knocked into the knife block. One of the steak knives hadn’t been stuck into the block properly, so it easily flipped out when Stiles hit it. It would have flown into the sink if Stiles hadn’t whipped his hand out with incredible speed, caught it by the handle, and replaced it, before getting that water refill that he’d been so keen on. Stilinski could only watch, completely baffled, as his son confidently strode out of the kitchen with his blessed glass of water, whistling a cheerful tune as he returned to his bedroom.

 

Something was not right with Stiles and his experience down in the Glades was likely to blame for it. Maybe the water was contaminated. Or perhaps Stiles had been infected with something undetectable by that glowing orange creature that they’d encountered in the cove. Opening up his laptop on the kitchen table, Stilinski began to search for any and all reports – official or otherwise – that were related to Homestead, the Glades, and the glowing orange creature.

 

* * *

 

The doorbell always stuck when someone pushed it, despite there being a sign out there asking people to knock instead. Tom had asked the owner of the house to fix it on numerous occasions, but the most he got for his troubles was a bemused chuckle and an, _I’ll get to it later on today._ But today always turned into tomorrow, which eventually translated into never. His gut instinct had told him to never sign the rental agreement locking him into this nightmare of a basement apartment for the next five months, but he’d been desperate to find a place of his own at the time and hadn’t made much of an effort to shop around. After his divorce, he hadn’t been able to stay in the same household as his ex-wife, even though they had parted on amicable terms. He had wanted a fresh new start, but all this basement apartment had given him so far was a headache, water damage to his furniture, and physical injuries whenever he tripped in the shower or going up the stairs when the power went out.

 

And now the doorbell was wailing throughout his bachelor apartment, giving him the option of either enduring it or answering the door to see who was outside. Not wanting to listen to that noise all day, he opted for opening the door to his uninvited guest.

 

“Russ, what’re you doing here?” It was nearly two in the afternoon and Russell should be at work. But the ranger was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a black t-shirt instead of his uniform, implying that he hadn’t been to work today and was not headed there now. Although Tom also had no intention of clocking in at work today, he was dressed in his full sheriff’s uniform because jeans and a t-shirt wouldn’t get him taken seriously.

 

“I heard you got a phone call from Stilinski this morning,” Russell said as he casually punched the doorbell to get it to stop ringing. “You really should get this fixed.”

 

“I’ve asked, but apparently Mr. Leitch thinks that the noise is amusing, as well as my reaction to it,” Tom said sarcastically.

 

“Can I come in?”

 

Tom looked undecided for a moment before reluctantly stepping aside so that Russell could enter. “I was on the verge of folding my laundry...,” he explained as he rushed over to the bed to turn the blanket over onto his pile of undershirts and underwear. He didn’t know why but having Russell so close to his bed and personal items made him very nervous.

 

“At least you fold your laundry,” Russell said with a smirk. “So what exactly did Stilinski say?” Clearly not getting the message about how sensitive Tom was about his personal space, Russell sat down on the edge of Tom’s bed and gazed at him with his perceptive brown eyes.

 

Feeling slightly embarrassed with Russell sitting there on his bed, Tom gestured helplessly to the suitcase that he’d thrown open on the floor. “He says that he knows about the aliens in the water. He wasn’t able to find anything official on the matter, but he did find your ex-brother-in-law’s blog on _the invasion of Homestead._ As amateurish as Dave’s blog was, the facts and evidence that he’d supplied was enough to get Stilinski digging deeper. He’s now convinced that his son was abducted by the alien and brainwashed, or something to that effect. So I have no choice but to go over to Beacon Hills to dissuade him from coming over here with a team of his deputies to conduct mass interviews and tread on my territory.”

 

“His son wasn’t abducted, was he?” Russell asked knowingly.

 

“I tried to get to him in time,” Tom stated, trying not to sound depressed and guilty as hell, but failing miserably.

 

“It’s not your responsibility to save everyone who gets dragged into the water, Tom. You can try, but whatever the alien does with these people is _not_ your fault. When are you going to accept that?”

 

“How am I going to explain the changes that Stiles is going through to his father?” Tom dropped down onto the bed beside Russell, giving him a truly fearful look. “Or the reason for those changes? If it had been a citizen of Homestead…”

 

“Yeah, but it’s not. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to contain this indefinitely.” After a moment’s hesitation, Russell wrapped an arm around Tom and pulled him close to comfort him. “But we can’t go advertising our _situation_ to the neighboring community either. That would be putting you and your family, and a whole lot of other innocent people at risk. I’ll go with you to Beacon Hills as moral support. Stilinski seems like a pretty understanding guy.”

 

“Russ, I was physically drained when you pulled me out of the water, not unconscious or deaf. I heard the accusations that Stilinski directed at me.” Tom couldn’t remember when Russell had become so emotionally supportive or affectionate with him, but he did know that being close to the ranger made him feel a lot more confident, and a lot less alone. Perhaps Russell needed the physical contact as much as he did, especially considering how the ranger was a widower now that his wife had been missing for over a year and was presumed dead. Whatever Russell’s reasons for holding him, Tom couldn’t deny that he liked having the ranger’s arm around him when he was feeling troubled and despondent. “Stilinski suspects that I’m something other than human…”

 

“And he’ll stop suspecting that when you meet with him and act completely human,” Russell said reassuringly. “Your abilities are restricted to the water, so all you need to do is stay away from any lakes or rivers. Don’t do anything marine mammal-like and you’ll shake his suspicions.”

 

“But you heard what the medic said. Stiles doesn’t have any identifying marks on him, meaning that he has most assuredly been transformed into a _hybrid_. And that means that there is the possibility that he will react to me as I reacted to him.”

 

“A very slim possibility. Your senses are far stronger than any other hybrid’s in town. You can sense even newly formed hybrids, but they can’t sense you. So stop worrying about it. The only thing we need to worry about is Stiles’ mental state. So long as he isn’t mentally unstable or violent, like a handful of newly created hybrids tend to be, we should be okay.”

 

Listening to Russell’s calm reasoning was soothing, so much so that Tom almost forgot about the arm around his shoulders, and how it was slowly creeping past the acceptable limit for a platonic hug. He didn’t want Russell to feel burdened with his drama, so he subtly pulled away and knelt down on the floor to begin packing whatever he would need for a five-day trip to Beacon Hills. That should be sufficient time for him to ascertain Stiles’ mental faculties and give him some guidance in his new form.

 

“How many days should I pack for?” Russell asked over Tom’s shoulder as he politely passed the sheriff the pile of neatly folded undershirts and briefs that he’d uncovered on the bed.

 

Unable to hide the blush that crept up his neck and into his cheeks at Russell handling his undergarments, Tom quickly grabbed them and put them at the very bottom of the suitcase, under his stack of immaculate white shirts. “Five,” he answered quickly, not questioning Russell’s eagerness to tag along or how the ranger had known about Stilinski in the first place.

 

“Sounds great!” Russell said cheerfully as he got up to leave. “I haven’t had a vacation in a long time, and Beacon Hills sounds a lot livelier than Homestead.”

 

Wondering in what way Beacon Hills could possibly be livelier than Homestead - the small, peaceful town that he loved so much - Tom watched Russell see himself out before he returned to his packing.

 

* * *

 

The art of brewing tea wasn’t dunking a tea bag into a mug of boiling hot water, or - heaven forbid - letting it steep for up to an hour in a pot. It was a much more refined process than the major tea manufacturers would have the common consumer believe. A good tea could only be produced from a temperature that was specific to the tea leaf mix in question, for the specified brewing time, in a vessel of appropriate size and shape. It was this annoyance with crappy commercial tea that was either bitter as hell, or watered down, artificially flavored crap that had spurred Derek into opening up his own tea shop. Except he hadn’t been satisfied with only serving tea because he knew that he could bake much nicer cakes and pastries than the supermarket or local coffee shop. So, in order to prove to himself – and to the people who had no common sense when it came to real food – that he could create a delicious dessert accompanied with a proper cup of tea, he had shifted his aim from tea shop to café.

 

Making the savory pies for dinner took a bit more work, so Derek usually premade them over the weekend and froze them so that they’d be ready to bake fresh throughout the week. He’d been met with a bit of skepticism at first because the residents of Beacon Hills weren’t accustomed to a man running a cutesy café with dainty cakes and fragile tea cups. But after the first customer had bravely put one foot in the front door of his café, a herd of friends and acquaintances had soon followed. Now he was so busy that a line formed outside his café an hour before he even opened for business in the morning. And all evening it was by reservation only. Thankfully he lived on the second floor so that he didn’t have to travel to and from work or he would never get any rest. Still, he loved his new job because it brought him peace and made him feel useful and wanted.

 

Hearing the door chime lightly, Derek straightened up from where he was filling chocolate mousse tarts in the kitchen. “We’re closed for business until dinnertime,” he called out, hoping that it wasn’t another one of the kind elderly ladies from down the street who was hard of hearing.

 

“Then I guess I have you all to myself until then,” a light, joking voice shouted back from the dining room.

 

“ _Stiles?”_ Derek rushed out of the kitchen so carelessly that he tripped on the line where the kitchen tiles met the seam of the raised carpeting in the dining room, nearly pitching face first into the gigantic leafy yucca plant that he’d placed in the dining room. But Stiles was quicker, springing forward to catch him in his arms as if he were a damsel in distress.

 

“You must have really missed me,” Stiles teased with a grin as he helped Derek regain his footing.

 

Feeling like a total idiot, Derek moved away from Stiles, keeping his head bowed until he could will the embarrassed heat out of his face. But as mortified as he felt about his clumsy stumbling act, he wasn’t so distracted that he missed the surge of strength that he felt in Stiles’ very powerful arms. They had felt a level or two up from simply being toned, meaning that Stiles had been working on them for quite some time. Another thing that Derek realized was that Stiles was not babbling on like a talkative doll that had had its cord ripped out. From what Derek remembered, even threatening Stiles couldn’t get him to stop talking. But that had been four years ago. A lot could happen in four years. People changed. Derek knew that for a fact because he had changed a lot. Stiles even looked different, more stable and grounded, with a lot more wisdom in those amber-brown eyes of his. Even the way he dressed made him seem older and more mature. He was wearing a cream colored polo shirt and a pair of dark slacks, along with a pair of black leather shoes. The old Stiles wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing such a serious outfit, but this Stiles really knew how to pull it off.

 

“Stiles…” What the hell should he say? _Nice to see you again? How’s life been treating you?_ But Derek couldn’t get the words out of his mouth because it wasn’t _nice_ to see Stiles again, it was downright shocking. He should’ve anticipated running into Stiles and rehearsed what he intended to say instead of standing beside the towering yucca plant looking like an antisocial moron.

 

Saving Derek from another few seconds of dreadful silence, Stiles retrieved the porcelain rabbit statues that he’d set down on one of the tables. “I was going to get you a plant, but I thought that table centerpieces might be a better idea.”

 

Derek listened to Stiles explain in thoughtful detail how he’d chosen the rabbit statues over the foxes and wolves because they seemed better suited for a classy café, although it had been a shame to abandon such wonderfully crafted feral animals. Not once did Stiles stammer or make an ill-timed joke. He seemed entirely sincere and stopped talking as soon as he’d supplied adequate background information on the gifts. “That was very _nice_ of you, Stiles. Thank you.” And Derek meant it. The hopping and dancing rabbits were very cute, and it made him so happy to finally get to see Stiles again, even if he was so stiff with nervous tension that he couldn’t move for fear of stumbling again and making a fool of himself.

 

“This is a really beautiful café,” Stiles praised, leaning onto one of the chairs as he turned this way and that, admiring the classic English décor that Derek had decided to go with. “You even have doilies. And yes, I know what doilies are.”

 

“Do you really like it?” It meant a lot to Derek to hear Stiles speaking fondly of his little establishment.

 

“What’s not to like? I’m just disappointed that you’re not open for business right now because my dad said that your cakes and tarts are the best!”

 

Smiling bashfully at Stiles’ unsubtle attempt to sample some of his baked goods, Derek pulled out a chair from the table closest to the kitchen and gestured for Stiles to take a seat. “I can make a special exception for you.” He hadn’t intended for his words to sound so flirtatious, but Stiles somehow managed to interpret them that way because his hand caught Derek’s before he could remove it from the back of the chair.

 

“I’m sure you could,” Stiles said suggestively as he stroked his fingers over Derek’s hand, before letting him shyly slip away. And then Stiles was making himself comfortable in the chair and pretending like he hadn’t just electrified Derek’s entire body with his touch.

 

Derek retreated to the kitchen before Stiles could witness the confusing range of emotions that passed over his face. Stiles had not just touched him like that. Stiles would never… The _old_ Stiles would never do that. Why would Stiles be interested in him in that way at all? Stiles had never been interested in him, had he? Derek had always been so sure that his feelings for the carefree, rambunctious, clever teenager had been one-sided. That’s why he had never said anything. Oh, who the hell was he trying to kid? The only reason why he had never said anything was because he was shy and awkward as hell when it came to expressing his emotions. He had spent the last three years roaming the desert alone in a quest to _find himself_ and better understand what it was that he had become. He had also tried to purge his feelings for Stiles so that he could move on with his life, but the fact that he had ultimately ended up back in Beacon Hills was a sure indicator that human emotions could not be so easily dismissed.

 

“Hey, Derek! Do you have any of these custard tarts left? It says on the menu that you can only order them for lunch but…”

 

 _You love custard,_ Derek remembered suddenly. How could he forget? Stiles loved shoving cream puffs and Boston cream donuts into his mouth after a long night of studying. Feeling a whirlwind of long buried emotions rising up out of the dust to attack his teary eyes, Derek sniffed, wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, and forced himself to reply in as normal a tone as possible “Sure, Stiles. I’ll make you some Darjeeling tea to go with them.”


	4. Chapter 4

“So, let me get this straight, you didn’t call ahead to make a reservation?” Russell glanced over at Tom, trying to determine if his friend was actually being serious or just fooling around. But Tom never fooled around. He just wasn’t the joking type.

 

“There are always vacant rooms down at the _Inn on the Glades_. Why wouldn’t Beacon Hills have a room available? There aren’t any events scheduled for this week, so…” Tom signaled left onto a busy street and aimed the cruiser straight for what looked like a major rush hour traffic jam.

 

“Tom, you don’t get out of Homestead much so you may not be aware of this, but there is something called a _peak season_. That’s when tourists usually flock to a nice sunny town for a week-long vacation with their families. And during that time, you’d be hard pressed to find a vacant room anywhere.”

 

“I know what peak season is, Russ,” Tom said in annoyance. “Even during peak season, Homestead still has plenty of vacant rooms.”

 

“That’s because nobody wants to visit Homestead,” Russell grated out in frustration. He really needed to get Tom away from that stuffy old town more often to broaden his horizons. While it would be reassuring for the citizens of Homestead to know that their sheriff was such a diligent, dedicated individual who loved his hometown, to everyone else it just sounded like Tom was excessively naïve. “Do you see what you’ve gone and done? It’s 6:30. You don’t go driving onto a main road on a weekday night when everyone is just getting off work.” Before Tom could draw another one of his comparisons, Russell beat him to it. “And yes, I know that rush hour doesn’t look like this in Homestead. But this isn’t Homestead.” Russell was well prepared for the withering look that Tom turned to give him, meeting it with a firm look of defiance.

 

“Would you prefer to drive? Because if you continue to criticize my driving skills, I’m going to get us into an accident.”

 

“Actually, I would. But I don’t want to get locked up for taking the sheriff’s cruiser for a joyride.” Up ahead there was a small side street that curved upwards on a steep slope before disappearing behind a small park lined with pine trees. Russell had no idea where the street led, but he was pretty damn sure that following an unmarked path would be better than sitting at an intersection for twenty minutes, waiting for the cars in front to move their asses out of the way. “Take a right up ahead,” he instructed, not caring that he was sounding like a backseat driver. If Tom was already fed up with him, then giving him one more order wouldn’t make much of a difference. “Unless you’d rather wait this traffic jam out,” he added when Tom gripped the steering wheel harder.

 

“Fine. But if it’s a dead-end street, you’re going to sit in the backseat where I put all the criminals,” Tom threatened.

 

“Considering how clean and neat you are, I’m guessing that you would never let germs and bacteria fester inside your beloved cruiser. So that backseat is probably clean enough to sleep on.”

 

Tom had nothing to say to that, so Russell counted it as a double win when the cruiser veered away from the main road and onto the side street. It was a fraction darker on the side street, but not by much because there were still functioning lamps on either side all the way up. Just as Tom was taking the curve at the top of the hill, Russell whacked him on the arm without thinking.

 

“Look! I found us a bed and breakfast!”

 

“Oww! Russ, I swear, if you _ever_ do that again…”

 

“Sorry. I got overexcited.” Thankfully Tom was not officially on duty so he couldn’t charge Russell for assault or anything like that. If it were any of Homestead’s deputies, Russell would have kept his hands to himself, but he sometimes allowed his familiarity with Tom to interfere with their personal working relationship. He was also well aware that he was forever making up excuses to touch Tom, and not entirely in a _just friends_ way. He’d been doing it for a while now, and Tom no longer seemed to mind it – unless he happened to be driving – but Russell still wasn’t sure if Tom actually understood the emotions behind the friendly hugs or touches that he gave him. So, not knowing what was going on inside Tom’s complicated head kept Russell on the fence, and prevented him from actively pursuing his adorably naïve sheriff.

 

“Are you sure this is a bed and breakfast? There aren’t any signs…” Tom had pulled into the small parking lot beside the old Victorian house and was peering out the windshield, trying in vain to find some indication that the home owner provided lodgings for travelers.

 

“The lights are on so it must be open. And there’s a menu by the front door, so let’s see what’s for dinner.” Russell got out and slammed the door, already halfway up the winding path of interlocking stones before he heard Tom hurrying to join him. “You took off your utility belt, right?” As much as he respected Tom’s profession, Russell did not want the more aggressive citizens of Beacon Hills to feel challenged by an out-of-town sheriff walking into a bed and breakfast fully armed.

 

“I locked it in the trunk,” Tom muttered, not even bothering to look at Russell when he answered, showing that he would not tolerate one more _suggestion_ from the park ranger. “And just to let you know, the crime rate in Beacon Hills is fifteen times higher than in Homestead, so if we encounter any trouble…”

 

“I’ll protect you,” Russell quipped, ignoring the look of disbelief that Tom shot him. Although Russell had made it sound like he was teasing his friend, he was actually being very sincere. Without his gun and badge, Tom was a lot more vulnerable than he realized. If they did encounter any violent crime during their short stay, Russell would not stand back and let Tom take it on alone. “Oh look, they have meat pies!” After a quick glance through the menu that was tacked to the side of the house, Russell pulled open the front door and strode right in. The drive over to Beacon Hills had made him incredibly hungry, mainly because the long stretch of farmland had bored the hell out of him. And the lack of a radio signal out in no-man’s land had tortured them with two and a half hours of nonstop country music filled with static. So the prospect of sitting down in a nice café for one of _Derek’s famous meat pies_ was enough to calm his aggravated nerves.

 

“Good evening,” a polite, if not somewhat reticent, voice called out to them. “Do you have a reservation?”

 

“Don’t start,” Russell said under his breath to Tom, before he addressed the mysterious dark-haired man with the short thick beard. Judging by the man’s body language and posture, he seemed to be the owner of the establishment, but Russell had a hard time imagining someone who obviously worked out at the gym on a daily basis operating such a pretty café. The man was a little shorter than him, about Tom’s height, but whereas Tom was lean and toned, this man had a well built chest and muscular arms that seemed incongruous with tea and crumpets. Russell considered himself quite the athlete as well and had the muscles and broad shoulders to show for it. Not to mention the physical strength that he’d built up from doing tough manual labor in the Glades for the past decade.

 

“Russ, what are you doing?” Tom hissed by his ear.

 

 _Crap!_ Russell hoped that Tom had not seen him acting like a typical macho airhead by comparing his muscles to the competition. “We’re not from around here,” he said, quickly answering the owner’s inquiry in order to get Tom off his back. “We’ve been driving for the past few hours and are literally starving. So, I know that we don’t have a reservation, but maybe this ten dollar bill can get us one?”

 

The café owner crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave Russell a firm look of disapproval before stating clearly, “I don’t take bribes.”

 

“I’ll handle this,” Tom intervened as he shouldered Russell out of the way. “We’re here on official business for Sheriff Stilinski, but our travel arrangements were very last minute, so I’m afraid that we don’t have a reservation for either a restaurant or a hotel.”

 

“And you’re a cop?”

 

“I’m Tom Underlay, the sheriff of Homestead.”

 

“Never heard of it.” The man relaxed his stance and calmly introduced himself. “I’m Derek. Usually we’re very busy around this time, but we just had a cancelation, so you’re in luck. Follow me.”

 

Why was it that people responded so positively to Tom but not to Russell, who considered himself more of a people person? Maybe because it was easy to see how trusting and naïve Tom was, making him easy to relate to. Why would Russell be jealous of those types of traits? He’d been told before that he was a bit brash and abrupt when he wanted something, but those were good qualities to have in today’s world of poor customer service and high crime.

 

“Here you are. A nice romantic table by the window,” Derek said flatly as he laid down their menus on the tablecloth, and promptly took off.

 

When Russell and Tom just stood there uncomfortably, a chatty old couple at the next table mock whispered to them. “Don’t mind Derek. He’s a tad antisocial, but his cooking more than makes up for it. Enjoy your romantic evening.”

 

 _Romantic evening?_ Russell had to grit his teeth to prevent his lips from curving up into a hopeful smile. Did he want to share a meal with Tom in that context? Hell, yes! Would Tom be receptive to a little romance between them? Probably not. No, definitely not. Why had Derek specified that the table was _romantic?_ Every moment Russell spent with Tom he had to work hard to conceal his feelings and keep his distance, both emotionally and physically. There was no way a stranger could have picked up on his burning desire to be with Tom romantically.

 

Realizing that Tom was still not sitting down, Russell made a show of dropping into his seat to study the menu. After a moment’s hesitation, Tom did the same, but instead of looking at the menu, he gazed out the window. It was at that moment that Russell realized that neither of them had corrected Derek or the elderly couple. That was so unlike Tom, to let an erroneous fact go unedited. Russell watched Tom for a moment, trying to interpret his closed expression. Even if he weren’t trying to figure out what his friend was thinking, Russell would still enjoy looking at Tom because he was really attractive with those angular features of his, and those intense blue eyes. And the atmosphere inside the cozy, candlelit café was only amplifying Tom’s sex appeal, making Russell want to reach across the table to stroke his fingers over one of those nicely sculpted high cheekbones.

 

“I thought I’d recognized you when you walked in!”

 

Startled by the sudden interruption to his thoughts, Russell looked up to see no one other than Stiles Stilinski standing there with a big grin on his face.

 

“Stiles, what are you doing here?” Tom asked in surprise.

 

“I came over to visit Derek.” Much to Russell’s dismay, Stiles pulled up a chair and sat down at their table. But he didn’t so much as glance in Russell’s direction because he seemed to be fascinated with Tom. “This is seriously going to sound weird, but I knew that you’d come in before I actually saw you. Like yesterday on the beach, I had this _feeling_ around you.”

 

Well, this was just a wonderful fucking turn of events! If Stiles was implying that he could sense Tom, then they had already lost the upper hand in the discussion. “I’m sure that you must have noticed the cologne that Tom is wearing. It’s quite distinct,” Russell cut in, trying to make Stiles doubt his own instincts. They weren’t ready to have this conversation right now. Not out in public in the middle of a café that just so happened to belong to one of Stiles’ friends.

 

“No,” Stiles said coldly, giving Russell a dirty look. “I’m sure that I said _feeling_ and not smell.” He paused when Derek came back to the table with two glasses of water. Avoiding looking at all three of them, Derek plunked the glasses down on Russell’s side and took off without asking if they were ready to order. “He’s just embarrassed because I told him he looks cute in an apron,” Stiles said by way of excusing Derek’s bad manners.

 

“Stiles, I don’t wish to be rude, but we’ve been on the road all afternoon and we’re really hungry,” Tom said gently, trying to chase him away.

 

“We’ll talk later then,” Stiles said with a firm tone, making sure that Tom knew that it wasn’t up for debate. “I can wait until you finish your dinner.” And then he was pushing his chair back and replacing it at the table he had stolen it from. But instead of going back to wherever he’d been sitting, he vanished into the kitchen after Derek.

 

As soon as Stiles was out of earshot, Tom leaned forward onto his elbows and whispered to Russell nervously. “He’s aware that something is different. And he can sense me. This has never happened before, Russ.”

 

“Can you sense his mental state? Do you think that he could pose a threat to you?” Because whenever a hybrid appeared with violent tendencies, Tom usually became the hapless target of all that negative energy. Hybrids tended to go down one of two roads. They would either allow themselves to be spiritually guided by Tom, therefore enriching their new lives with the sense of a higher purpose, or they would rebel against Tom, attempting to hurt or kill him in the process. There was no way that Russell was going to let anyone try the latter ever again.

 

“It’s too soon to say. At this point, I’m not sensing any animosity from him, so it’s possible that he’s mentally stable.” Tom cast his gaze in the direction of the kitchen, looking thoughtful. “And he does seem to be positive and cheerful.”

 

“That’s because he’s hitting on the chef,” Russell snickered, wondering what was going on back in the kitchen, and wishing that he had the guts to hit on Tom like that. But it really wasn’t a matter of guts. It was more a matter of common sense. There was too much at risk when it came to his relationship with Tom. If he went and screwed up their friendship by overstepping his bounds… there would be no going back.

 

* * *

 

 

In the far corner of Derek’s kitchen was a large water cooler that occasionally produced bubbles and made a low humming sound, ready to dispense either cold water or hot water. If Derek hadn’t been moving around the kitchen in the most distracting way, Stiles might have planted himself firmly in front of that water cooler and drunk to his heart’s content.

 

“You know those two?” Derek asked absently as he used his oven mitts to retrieve a rack of meat pies from the oven, carrying them over to the counter to set them down onto the board to cool.

 

“Who? Sheriff Underlay and his male companion?” Stiles asked cheekily.

 

Derek looked at Stiles curiously before he began to arrange the serving plates on the large island that he kept clear for that purpose. “How did you know they were together?”

 

“How did _you_ know they were together?” Stiles threw the question back at Derek because he wasn’t quite sure how to put his hunch into words.

 

“Because that man’s scent is all over the sheriff and the atmosphere is rife with pheromones. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that he was a werewolf and scent marking Underlay on purpose.”

 

“Because scent marking is ultra sexy,” Stiles said as he met Derek’s gaze and held it. If Derek hadn’t been hard at work, Stiles would have shown him a thing or two about scent marking. Not that he had any practical knowledge of how one went about imparting their scent on another person, although he had no trouble using his imagination. Maybe just some frisky fondling or rubbing ought to do the trick. He’d missed Derek so much, much more than he had ever allowed himself to feel, and now, having him so close… Stiles sighed quietly in disappointment when those sea-green eyes found something else to focus on. While Derek may have been just as socially awkward as he’d ever been, there was something different about him. Something calm and focused that hadn’t been there before. Considering all the recipes that he had to remember, Derek needed to be in charge of his mind in order to not screw anything up.

 

“You still haven’t told me how you know Sheriff Underlay and his boyfriend,” Derek persisted as he began to dish out a large scoop of potato salad per plate.

 

“Who, Tom?” Stiles casually began to refer to the sheriff by his first name, before admitting that he actually knew the other man’s name as well. “And Russell? Well, Tom found me after I supposedly drowned in the Everglades National Park yesterday, and kept me company while I was interviewed by a half dozen serious looking medics. And Russell hovered over Tom like a protective mama bear the whole time. Like he thought I was going to attack him or something.”

 

“You almost _drowned_?!”

 

Stiles jumped at the sound of a stainless steel scoop clattering onto the floor. “Geez! Thanks for giving me a heart attack,” he gasped, stooping down to pick up the fallen utensil for Derek. “There was some kind of crazy fish in the water, and it overturned our boat. It was no big deal.”

 

“If it’s no big deal, then why have those two men come to Beacon Hills to meet with your father?”

 

“I don’t know the details… _yet_ …, but you know my dad, _every accident is preventable_ yada yada. The cop in him needs someone to blame for what happened.” Stiles passed the scoop back to Derek and gave him a really long visual inspection from head to toe. And Derek reacted to it like a wolf that had just been given a really thorough grooming with his favorite brush. Stiles could practically feel the pleasurable vibes emanating off of Derek as he stood there, scoop in hand, oblivious to the rest of the world in his trancelike state. Stiles wondered why he had never made the move on Derek before, or why he had wasted his precious time and resources on dating in college, when it was clearly obvious that this gorgeous man with his dark fuzzy face, sorrowful sea-green eyes, and yummy body was who he should have been actively chasing from day one. Even if Derek could not see it himself, Stiles _knew_ that this enigma of a man was _the one_. Why hadn’t he seen it before? He’d known for years that Derek held a special place in his heart, but he’d never felt so damn sure that there could be no one else who would fit so perfectly with him. What the hell was this _feeling?_ Stiles had always believed in love at first sight because there was a romantic layer to him, right under the layer of perverted immaturity, which seemed to be oddly subdued today. But _this_? This overwhelming magnetic pull towards Derek that he was losing more and more of himself to by the second? It wasn’t so much a feeling as it was an _instinct_.

 

“Stiles?”

 

Derek sounded very nervous, as he probably should, because while Stiles had been sunbathing in his emotional epiphany, he had somehow managed to pin the wolf to the island. Before Stiles could put the brakes on the wave of impulsiveness that he seemed to now be riding, he found his hands on Derek’s fuzzy bearded face and his body pressing in close to the object of his desires. This was happening! It was really happening, and Derek was not doing anything to stop him. If anything, those brooding sea-green eyes were luring him in closer. Derek _wanted_ him! Stiles could sense it. Not wanting to jinx himself and screw up his good fortune, Stiles pressed up against Derek even tighter and kissed him… on the lips. The wolf made a surprised sound at first, but then gave into the kiss, allowing Stiles to slip his tongue inside to taste and explore. It was almost too good to be true at first. After all those years of longing for Derek, the wolf was now _his?_ Just to make sure, Stiles kissed Derek harder, causing the wolf to make a warm appreciative sound to let Stiles know that his feelings were reciprocated. And _scent marking_? Stiles would show Derek how much he knew about scent marking! Taking his hands off of Derek’s face to replace them on the wolf’s hips, Stiles rubbed his entire lower body tightly against the wolf’s black jeans-clad thigh. “How’s this for scent marking?” He murmured close to Derek’s ear after he’d let the wolf up for air.

 

“Why now?” Derek gasped when Stiles began to nibble on his ear. “You never--.”

 

“But I should’ve,” Stiles interrupted.

 

At the sound of the tiny chime above the door jingling, Derek partially came to his senses and tried to break away. “Stiles, I have to see to the customer.”

 

“No you don’t.” Stiles kissed Derek again, smirking when the wolf automatically returned the kiss. But when the door jingled for a second time, Stiles let him go. “We’re not finished tonight,” he said as he watched his love interest begin to smooth down his apron and fix his hair. There were so many things that he needed to get off his chest. Years of regrets and a lifetime of promises.

 

While Derek had pulled away from the kiss looking completely dazed, he suddenly tensed up and narrowed his eyes. If he had been in full wolf form, Stiles imagined that his fur would have been bristling in the wrong direction. “There’s another wolf nearby,” he said worriedly as he took off out of the kitchen.

 

Another wolf? There couldn’t be another wolf in Beacon Hills. The only alpha who had stuck around for the past three years was Scott, and according to Stiles’ father, the alpha was in Washington attending a veterinarian conference. The rest of Scott’s pack had split up and left Beacon Hills to enter separate colleges, out of state, so who the hell could the other wolf be?

 

When they barged into the dining room, they found no new customers and nothing amiss. Nothing to indicate that there had been a wolf in the café except for…

 

Stiles watched Derek weave around the small dining tables until he got to the one that was situated in front of the foggy bay window. There was a bit of drizzle outside, which might soon turn into a thunderstorm, if the weather forecast turned out to be accurate for a change. Russell was impatiently sitting at that table and glaring at his cell phone, but he instantly looked up when Derek stopped right in front of him.

 

“Still no meat pie?” Russell asked in confusion.

 

“Where is Sheriff Underlay?” Derek demanded to know.

 

“He went outside to help one of your deputies with his car,” Russell answered cautiously. “Why?”

 

“Which deputy?” Stiles broke in, beginning to feel very agitated.

 

“Deputy Torres. Why? What’s going on?”

 

When Russell looked at him with a combination of fear and concern, Stiles knew that the park ranger had the right to know the truth. “There is no Deputy Torres working for the department.” Although Derek was the first one to the front door, Russell was not far behind, having knocked over his chair in his haste to get outside to Tom.


	5. Chapter 5

The sky overhead had blackened considerably since it had begun to drizzle, making Tom wish that he had grabbed his sheriff’s jacket from the cruiser before following Deputy Torres down the road and across the street. There weren’t any street lamps in this direction, making it difficult to see what he was stepping on in the dark, because there was also no sidewalk to follow. “How far down is your car?” Tom asked as he quickened his pace to keep up with the taller man. Back in the café, Torres had seemed rather pleasant with his good manners and wide smile. He was a blonde haired man with dark brown eyes and a pale complexion. He’d claimed to be on his way home from a game of golf when he’d pulled over to answer a phone call. And when he’d tried to start the car again, he hadn’t been able to unlock the steering wheel. It was apparently jammed, and no matter how hard he’d jerked it back and forth, he hadn’t been able to get it moving again. But while returning from a golf game would explain his checked slacks and polo shirt, it didn’t jive with his muscular physique or the beaten up condition of his hands. He just didn’t seem like the type of man who would be content with amusing himself with a game of golf. Tom found himself wondering what kind of recreational activity led to so many cuts, scratches, and bruises.

 

“At the bottom of the hill,” Torres replied as he hunched forward a bit to avoid getting rainwater into his eyes.

 

Tom squinted but couldn’t make out any vehicles at the bottom of the hill. Sure, it was dark, but it wasn’t _that_ dark. But there had to be a car out there somewhere. What reason would Torres have for lying about the condition of his car? The men working under Stilinski had a reputation for being honest and loyal hard workers. If Torres was indeed one of Stilinski’s deputies… Suddenly, Tom began to feel very uneasy about the purposeful way Torres was striding through the long, wet grass. It was as if he were trying to put as much distance between them and the café as possible. And other than that café, there were no other houses or buildings in sight. “What kind of car do you drive?” Tom cautiously asked as he slowed his pace, choosing to trust his instincts over the amiable smile that the deputy had introduced himself with.

 

“A Toyota,” Torres answered in an annoyed tone.

 

Tom abruptly stopped and took up a defensive stance as he surveyed his environment. “What model?” He asked to stall for time, already realizing that he had walked into a trap. But a trap for what? He had left his wallet in the glove compartment of his car because Russell usually insisted on paying for dinner whenever they ate out. And he had never been to Beacon Hills in his life, so he couldn’t possibly have any enemies that wanted to do him any harm. He was also pretty sure that he hadn’t cut anyone off on the highway because he was a very safe and courteous driver. So what was Torres after? Why had this man come right up to him in Derek’s café, specifically asking for _his_ help, and not Russell’s? Most superficial people would take one look at Russell and assume that he was better suited to fix a car, and they would be correct.

 

“What the _fuck_ does it matter what model I drive?” Torres demanded to know as he whirled around to face Tom.

 

Whatever angry dressing down Tom had been prepared to give the man for his deception died in his throat as soon as he saw the way Torres’ eyes were glowing red in the dark. He instinctively backed away, dropping his right hand to his hip to… come up with _nothing_. His utility belt was safely stowed in the trunk of his cruiser, and he’d left his car keys and cell phone on the corner of the dining table, so he was unarmed and defenseless against a madman. That’s what Torres had to be, a crazed lunatic. What else could he be? But what was wrong with his eyes?

 

“Back away!” Tom commanded when Torres began to advance on him. Could he take on a man of Torres’s size and strength? Not if he wanted to avoid hospitalization. “I may not be with the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department, but I am still a _sheriff_ ,” he ground out, emphasizing the word _sheriff_ when Torres circled around him to cut him off from the café and force him back down the hill.

 

“I know,” Torres said with a malicious grin that showed off his jagged teeth that were accentuated by a pair of very sharp fangs. “And that’s why I _want_ you.”

 

This was insane! Tom was not about to let some lunatic drive him down into the ambush that was probably waiting for him at the bottom of the hill. Maybe Torres had orchestrated the whole sick event with his drinking buddies to scare the hell out of one of the locals, but had jumped at the opportunity to victimize an out-of-town sheriff instead. “I don’t have time for your drunken games. Get out of my way!” He ordered, trying to storm past Torres with his dignity intact. The hands that grabbed for him were not at all unexpected. Tom avoided them and lashed out at the man’s face with a wild swinging punch that he intensified with the movement of his hips. He knew that he would only get one or two hits in before Torres came after him, so he had to make them count.

 

But Torres amazingly darted aside to avoid the punch, and then seized Tom by his wrist, lifting him into the air like an ensnared rabbit in a noose. “You don’t seem to understand, _sheriff_. I said that I want you, and that means that I’m going to have you.”

 

As strong as Torres looked, Tom had never imagined that he would be _this_ strong. He clawed at Torres’ arm with his left hand, straining upwards as he tried to pry the man’s steely fingers away from his right wrist. As frantically as he fought back, kicking at Torres’ stomach, and then trying to drive his knee into the larger man’s sternum, nothing had any effect on the deputy impersonator. He would have had better luck battling with a bear because Torres was immovable. And what did Torres mean when he said that he _wanted_ him? “Do you have any idea how many laws you are in violation of by restraining me like this?!” Tom shouted angrily, now aiming his kicks for Torres’ crotch, because he knew that no man could possibly be impenetrable down there.

 

“You may be wild and willful now, but you’ll be tame and obedient by the time I’m done with you,” Torres promised as he flung Tom into a pile of wet leaves inside the covered shelter of the tree-lined forest bordering the park.

 

Tom hit the ground with his hip first, followed by his left arm, scraping the side of his hand and forearm on the tiny rocks that littered the ground as his momentum caused him to skid on the wet leaves. It was a miracle that he hadn’t hit his head in the fall, but the force of the impact knocked the wind out of him, leaving him lying there in shock for several precious seconds. He couldn’t afford to waste even a few seconds if Torres intended to do what Tom feared he was going to. Surely by now Russell must have noticed that he’d been gone for far too long and would be out searching for him. Sometimes Tom got irritated by how Russell seemed to always second guess his actions, and often interfered with his judgment, but now he realized that his friend was just being overprotective of him. Because, as much as Tom hated to admit it, he was too damn trusting. Always taking people at face value because he wanted to believe that there was some goodness in everyone. How had he allowed himself to be led into this dark, isolated area of the neighborhood so easily? With this violent, sadistic man displaying what looked like a bizarre eye mutation?

 

“Stay down,” Torres ordered, shoving Tom back down onto his belly when he tried to push himself to his feet to get up and run. “You’re going to make such a nice mate,” he said as he dragged his nails over Tom’s left forearm, which was now bare after his shirt had been ripped in the tussle.

 

“Don’t touch me!” Tom shouted, wincing when those _nails_ sliced open his skin, causing him to bleed. He struggled to throw Torres off but the other man was just too strong. When he felt Torres grab the back of his shirt to yank it out of his pants, Tom renewed his struggles, desperately praying that Russell would find him in this dark, damp, muddy pile of leaves before Torres took from him what he wasn’t willing to give.

 

“You smell as delicious as you look,” Torres growled by Tom’s ear, tearing his shirt down the collar so that he could get at the back of Tom’s neck.

 

“Stop it!” Tom pleaded, his voice breaking when he felt a set of sharp teeth graze his skin. He tried to get up again but the powerful hand that slapped between his shoulder blades forced him back down into the wet leaves. There was now a dry, calloused hand scraping along his bared lower back, working its way into the back of his trousers. At the feeling of that hand questing lower, Tom lost all control and cried out for help to anyone who might have been close enough to hear. That was all the incentive Torres needed to wrench him up by his hair and scare him into submission.

 

“There are only two choices, _sheriff_. You either shut up and take it like a man, or I rip you apart like a piece of meat. You choose.”

 

By that time Tom was trembling so hard his teeth were chattering, and his vision was blurred by the hot tears that stung the corners of his eyes. He didn’t want either option. What he wanted was to be sitting back in that cozy little café with Russell, enjoying the friendly banter that he was so accustomed to. Or sitting close to the ranger so that he could feel comforted by the man’s strong arm around his shoulders. He didn’t want to be lying on the cold, wet ground, being scratched up by some maniac’s sharp nails as he braced himself to be raped.

 

Just when Torres was pushing his hand inside Tom’s ripped shirt to claw at his chest, a sudden force smashed into him from behind, knocking him off of Tom and into one of the neighboring trees. Tom nearly screamed when he felt a warm hand touch his face, until he recognized the aura it belonged to. _Russell!_ A terrified whimper escaped him when Russell pulled away, until he realized that his friend was going after Torres. But when he raised his head off of the ground to watch what was sure to be a bloody, no-holds barred battle, his heart froze with horror at the sight of the monster Russell was up against.

 

Torres was suddenly not Torres. He was wearing the same clothes and had the same general features, but he was otherwise not at all human. His face was now covered in a thick brown matted fur, with both ears pointed up like that of an animal’s. His upper body looked a lot more muscular as it was now straining against the confines of his polo shirt, and his hairy fingers were curved into extremely sharp claws. And his fangs… Russell couldn’t fight that _thing!_ Torres would shred Russell before he got the chance.

 

But Russell didn’t seem to share Tom’s sane reasoning because he was already lashing out at Torres like a beast with a vengeance. One of Russell’s absolute worst traits – the one that he did his best to keep hidden – was his impulsive, explosively violent temper. He had killed a man once after he’d lost his temper – in defense of a murdered friend – and put several others into the hospital on separate occasions. Tom had always known what Russell was capable of, but had never witnessed him this furious before. While Torres had the upper hand with his mutated animal body and superior bulk, Russell was faster and more lethal with the punches that he pummeled the man with. If it had only been a matter of a street fight, Russell would have won, but there was a lot more to Torres than just fighting prowess.

 

Tom tried to get up to help Russell when Torres raked his claws across the ranger’s chest, shredding his t-shirt and drawing enough blood to spray the leaves at their feet. But he hurt all over, and it was only after he looked down at his shirt that he realized why. Torres had cut him in several places, including his arm, neck, chest, and lower back, and his clothing was stained with blood. His fear had been temporarily masking the pain, but now that same fear was amplifying it.

 

“Stay out of this!” Russell shouted when he noticed that Tom was trying to get up. “I’m going to _kill_ this _sonuvabitch_ for putting his hands on you like that! And I don’t give a shit if he’s a man or some hairy _freak_ of nature!” But after the vicious way Russell elbowed Torres in the eye, he was unprepared for the man-beast retaliating by grabbing hold of his right arm by the wrist and elbow, yanking him in close, and chomping down on his forearm like a dog with a bone. “ _GYAA_!”   Russell shouted in agony, trying to pull his arm away from the locked jaws that would not release him.

 

The two of them grappled with each other, knocking into trees and slipping on the wet ground as the rain really began to pick up. It soon became evident that Russell was losing and would not last much longer with the way he was bleeding. That’s when Tom noticed the gun sticking out from the back of Russell’s waistband. _Tom’s_ gun. Why hadn’t Russell used it? He had probably been too incensed to pull it out when he’d found Torres all over Tom like that. And now he was fighting for his life, not being given even a moment’s reprieve to grab for it.

 

Picking himself up off the ground, Tom limped over to where the two men were fighting, unable to stop his trembling when he got close enough to Torres to look into those glowing red eyes and hear the rumbling growl that emanated low in the man’s throat. “When I’m done with your protector, I’m going to throw you back down onto the ground and take you _extra hard_ , before I share you with the rest of my pack.”

 

Tom reached Russell who was trying to break free from Torres’ headlock, his arms and upper body covered in blood as he heaved hard with pain and exhaustion. Pulling his service pistol free from Russell’s waistband, Tom flicked off the safety, pulled back the hammer and aimed it at Torres’ chest. Not hesitating, he fired the gun point blank in the general vicinity of Torres’ heart and watched the crazed man-beast take a few wobbly steps backwards, release Russell, and crash down onto the floor of the forest. A second later, Russell collapsed not far from him.

 

“ _Russell!”_ Tom dropped to his knees beside Russell and began to tearfully inspect his injuries. His flesh was torn up along his chest with bits of fabric caught in the wound, making it look excruciatingly painful. Both his arms were mauled, with a deep indentation of bite marks sinking nearly clean to the bone on his right forearm. And the rest of him was covered in blood, bruises and gashes. “God… _Russ_ …” Leaning forward, Tom tried to press his hands against Russell’s chest wound to stave the bleeding, but jumped back when his friend groaned in agony.

 

“Tom… come here,” Russell beckoned, blearily reaching for Tom’s face with one of his blood streaked hands.

 

“What is it?” Tom asked as he leaned down to Russell, trying hard not to panic. “I have to get you to a hospital… or call an ambulance…” He gazed deeply into those pain-stricken brown eyes that he adored so much and nearly broke down on the spot. “ _Please_ … just hold on!”

 

But Russell merely smiled thinly as he drew his hand over Tom’s cheek in an unmistakable caress. “I’m not going to make it…” And then with his last ounce of strength, he pulled Tom in close to kiss him softly on the lips. Before Tom could even register what had happened, the warm touch of Russell’s lips was gone and the hand dropped from his face.

 

“ _Russell!”_ Tom sobbed as he pressed both hands back against Russell’s chest. “Somebody help me!!!” He shouted, leaning closer to Russell to listen for any sign of breathing because he couldn’t move his hands to check for a pulse.

 

“Nobody is going to help you,” came a voice from a body that should have been dead.

 

* * *

 

 

It was raining hard by the time that Stiles and Derek reached the top of the hill. There was nothing but a large open space on the steep hill overlooking Derek’s café, with more trees down the other side of it. How could Tom have allowed himself to be lured up onto the hill? It didn’t make any sense because no one would have believed that a car would be up on the hill.

 

“Derek, are you sure that Tom came up this way? Because Russell went in the opposite direction, and it kind of looked like he knew where he was going.”

 

“How could Russell know which way Tom went?” Derek asked in annoyance. “He isn’t a wolf. He can’t smell other wolves like I can. And I’m telling you that I smell wolves up here.”

 

“I’m just saying that Russell is a park ranger and does a lot of tracking. Maybe we should’ve stuck together…”

 

“The last thing we want is for anyone from out of town encountering a werewolf,” Derek explained to Stiles. “If Torres has already revealed himself to Tom, then nothing can be done about that, but we don’t need to involve Russell as well.”

 

“Why would this Torres guy, whoever he is, want to kidnap Tom?” Because nothing would stir up more trouble than a kidnapped sheriff. Torres was willing to risk the wrath of both the Beacon Hills _and_ the Homestead County Sheriff’s Department by attempting such a brazenly illegal act? Judging by Tom’s flawless record with the department, his deputies would no doubt be pissed if anything happened to him. And Stiles’ father hated anyone messing with the brave men and women who went out onto the streets to risk their lives for the general public every day, so he would be doubly pissed. “Crappy annoying rain,” Stiles muttered as he swiped his soaking wet hair backwards so that it would stop dripping into his face. “Wouldn’t it have been faster to track Tom by scent, instead of…   Hey, wait a minute. Did you say _wolves_ , as in more than one?”

 

“I don’t go around sniffing every person I meet, so _no_ , it wouldn’t have been faster to track Tom because I don’t know his scent. And _yes_ , I meant more than one wolf. I think there might be two.” Derek wasn’t holding up much better in the rain, occasionally pausing to clear his eyes of rainwater or shake the cold rain droplets off of his arms.

 

From the top of the hill, Stiles could see the roof of Derek’s charming café, and the tops of the cars in the parking lot. Including his own jeep and Tom’s cruiser, there were five vehicles crammed together in that tight little space. One of the cars was nearly touching Stiles’ jeep, meaning that some jerk didn’t know how to park properly. “Do you think that we should’ve told your customers that you were going to be gone for a while?”

 

“What for?” Derek asked curtly. “They have enough garlic bread to keep them occupied for a while.”

 

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you are the _owner_ of the restaurant, and you don’t have any waiters or waitresses. So you just left a bunch of strangers sitting in your dining room with the cash register unattended.”

 

“I don’t have a cash register,” Derek quickly corrected him.

 

“Okay…, but someone could go up to the second floor and--.”

 

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek cut him off in exasperation. “All of my customers are regulars who wouldn’t do such a thing. And most of them are too old to go climbing up that steep, rickety staircase.”

 

“Problem solved then,” Stiles said sheepishly. “I just worry, you know… about you.” Even though it was dark and the rain was coming down harder than a shower on full blast, making it difficult to hear, Stiles still thought he saw Derek turn slightly pink at his display of concern. “You’re living all by yourself in that haunted house--.”

 

“It isn’t haunted,” Derek interrupted.

 

“If you say so. But you’re _all alone_ with – what was it again? Four bedrooms? – three empty bedrooms, and an antique piano in the corner of your dining room that you can’t even play.” If they hadn’t been expending all their energy in the search for a missing sheriff, Stiles was quite sure that Derek might have cracked a smile at his subtle offer of company for the night.

 

“If you can play that piano, I’ll let you stay for tea later,” Derek said casually, although there was nothing really casual about drinking tea with the wolf late at night. “ _Wait!”_ Derek turned abruptly to glare in the direction of the park across the street, his eyes now beginning to glow blue.

 

“What is it?!”

 

“I can hear Tom crying.”

 

All the muscles in Stiles’ body tensed as he prepared to spring forward to follow his charging wolf back down the hill. But a blur of black that shot up into his peripheral vision smashed into his side, knocking him down onto the wet, muddy grass. A similar shape came up the hill on the other side, aiming for Derek, but the wolf was quicker, agilely spinning out of its path, before turning to growl at it.

 

“Stupid asshole,” Stiles grumbled as he got back up again, his nice new shirt and slacks caked with mud. Standing before them were two werewolves that they’d never seen before. They were both tall, blonde haired, and smartly dressed in dark business-casual wear, although one was darker than the other and had green eyes instead of brown. While most werewolves tended to be in their late teens to 20’s, these two looked like they were in their 40’s, which was not so common for their kind. Derek was a rare purebred wolf, meaning that he had been born a wolf, and not made. That also meant that he didn’t feel particularly obligated to join a pack, or mingle with his brethren, which would probably allow him to have a much longer lifespan.

 

In order to _make_ a wolf, an alpha would need to choose a viable subject that would be able to withstand the hostility of the bite. Because teenagers had stronger immune systems and were hardier than older members of society – generally speaking – most alphas chose to bestow the gift of the bite upon them in order to add young blood to their pack. But that’s where things got screwy. If the bite did not successfully change the recipient, it would end up killing them. So there were quite a few teens who owed their early funerals to an adverse reaction to the bite. And some of the teens who did go on to become full fledged wolves ended up turning on their alphas when they began to covet power. It was all very barbaric and violent, but the bottom line was that due to the inherent nature of werewolves, most of them didn’t live to see 30. And yet, here were two prime examples of healthy looking specimens who seemed to have defeated the odds.

 

“What is your asshole buddy doing to Tom?” Derek demanded to know as he unleashed both his fangs and claws in anticipation of a fight.

 

“Is that the sheriff’s name? Tom?” The wolf with the green eyes smirked at Derek, and then addressed his partner in an amused tone. “You hear that, Colton? Max’s new mate has a name.”

 

“ _Mate?!”_ Oh, hell no! There were a million reasons why Tom could not become a werewolf. While Tom did not look as old as these two wolves, Stiles was pretty damn sure that the sheriff had to be somewhere in his mid to late 30’s. As healthy as he happened to look, there was still a very good chance that the bite would kill him. And he was a sheriff! These idiots couldn’t go around turning sheriffs, especially ones that came from towns where the werewolf population was zero. And on top of that… “He already has a mate,” Stiles said angrily, feeling indignant on Tom’s behalf because the sheriff was with Russell, and you couldn’t go screwing around with another man’s mate. It was vile, tasteless, and incredibly wrong. If anyone dared to chase after Derek…

 

“He hasn’t been properly mated,” Colton sneered. “Max is rectifying that situation right now, isn’t he, Jayce?”

 

“Move aside,” Derek growled threateningly, trying to get between the two wolves who were guarding the other side of the hill.

 

“I don’t think so,” Jayce said firmly. “Max didn’t come here with the intention of initiating Tom into our pack. He just got lucky when he saw that yummy, blue-eyed sheriff entering your café. What we really came here for was you, Derek.”

 

“Oh, I seriously don’t think so,” Stiles laughed humorlessly as he clenched his hands into fists and prepared to defend his wolf. “You jackasses really need to go find yourselves a dating site or something and stop messing with people who are already in a relationship.”

 

Colton laughed at what he thought was nothing more than a puffed up human spewing empty threats. “Listen, you deputy wannabe, our pack has quite a reputation for both getting what we want, and for destroying anyone who gets in our way. In the last town we visited, two of our own became a bit too ambitious, so we had to gut them in the streets and leave their corpses for the crows to scavenge. Now our alpha needs to replace his mate, and Jayce here needs a new boy toy. Seeing as how Max took a liking to Tom, I think that it’s only fair that Jayce gets the eye candy that he’s after as well.”

 

“Not interested,” Derek flat-out refused, looking at Jayce as if he were a big repulsive twitching cockroach.

 

“Not to repeat myself or anything, but stop _fucking_ messing with what belongs to other people,” Stiles warned in a raised voice as he began to advance on the wolves with Derek. “Now, get the fuck out of our way and let us get to Tom, or you’re the ones who are going to end up gutted.” While he had only intended to state it as a threat, the second the words left his mouth, Stiles realized that he was dead serious. If that stony-eyed wolf tried to put the moves on Derek, Stiles would take great pleasure in rearranging his innards to dump into that new compost heap down by the lake.

 

Jayce was not the only one who reacted to Stiles’ overly possessive threats. Derek was giving Stiles a questioning look out of the corner of his eye that might have been in response to either the idea that they were now officially in a relationship – without having discussed the issue first – or Stiles’ vicious promise of werewolf carnage.

 

When Jayce moved forward to intercept Derek, Stiles shot between them in a simmering rage to punch the larger wolf in the jaw, not giving him a chance to reach his goal. He’d just thought that a few punches might slow Jayce down long enough for Derek to transform and finish him off. But what he hadn’t been expecting was for his punch to knock Jayce off of his feet and onto his back, leaving him rolling in the mud for a second before he could recover. Had he really just done that?! Where had that power come from?

 

“Stiles!” While Stiles had been staring down at his own knuckles in wonder, an enraged Colton had leapt at him with his fangs bared, ready to do some major damage. But Derek was faster, shifting into his full wolf form in midair so that he could lock his entire set of lethally sharp teeth onto Colton’s throat and tear him away from Stiles.

 

Forcing himself to focus, Stiles took off after Jayce so that he couldn’t join Colton in ganging up on Derek, who seemed to be doing just fine all by himself in his furry wolf mode. Winding up again, he punched the wolf in the shoulder with even more power than he had used the first time, not even blinking to clear the rainwater from his eyes before he took aim. And again, the wolf went down, snarling and even angrier the second time. Feeling like he ought to audition for the role of Superman in the next Justice League movie, Stiles raised his foot to stomp on Jayce’s face, but was stopped by the five slender claws that reached around his neck and pulled back sharply. One minute Stiles was standing there poised to destroy Jayce, and the next he was grasping at his throat and choking in horror when he realized that there was hot blood trickling through his fingers. _His_ blood!

 

“You two idiots didn’t stop to wonder why only Max and Jayce needed new mates?” A deep, feminine voice purred behind Stiles. “If you were half as smart as you think you are, you might have wondered where Colton’s mate was.”

 

Sinking to his knees in agonized fear, Stiles paid no attention to the fact that the rain was now back down to a trickle and on the verge of letting up. He kept the pressure on his throat, not knowing how bad the damage was, but nearly beside himself with terror thinking that this new female wolf may have punctured an important artery. And to add to his misery, he heard the very human sound of Derek moaning in pain, which meant that his wolf had been forced out of his transformation. Barely able to lift his head to see what was going on, Stiles’ vision clouded with hatred when he saw the way Colton had Derek restrained on the ground. In the very short span of time it had taken the she-wolf to incapacitate him, both Jayce and Colton had ganged up on Derek to take him out with full powered attacks. His wolf was now covered in bruises and had both arms being tugged painfully behind his back by Colton, while Jayce moved in to sample his prize.

 

“Get the fuck away from him!” Stiles shouted, or at least tried to, because all that came out was dry rasping that made his torn up throat hurt many times worse than before.

 

Jayce gripped Derek by his jaw and yanked his head up as he stooped down to admire his mate-to-be. “I’ll give you the same choice Max gave Tom. You can either come willingly which, by the sounds of it, Tom chose not to do. Or you can see how much longer you can last before I break you in the same way.”

 

Derek tried in vane to pull his face away from Jayce’s, still growling and attempting to snap at him despite no longer being in his wolf form. “I’m not choosing anything until one of you assholes calls an ambulance for Stiles!”

 

“Wrong answer.” Jayce glanced up at Colton and grinned. “Hold him still.”

 

“No!” Stiles struggled to his feet, trying to get to Derek, but collapsed to his knees again when the movement nearly caused him to vomit.

 

And then Jayce was forcing his mouth over Derek’s in order to kiss him, and Stiles’ entire reality fell to pieces.


	6. Chapter 6

There was something soft brushing against Russell’s face, and it smelled like mints. But it was very faint, as if it had been all used up in the rain. Russell opened his eyes to slits, a soundless gasp of pain escaping him as his entire body lit up with excruciating agony, but he inhaled deeper, trying to catch that alluring aroma again. Peering down the bridge of his nose, he saw a mess of blondish-brown hair nestled under his chin. That wonderfully sweet smell of mints must be coming from the organic shampoo that Tom regularly ordered off the Internet, because the drugstore in Homestead only sold unscented and papaya. But why was he only noticing it now? Tom never wore any cloying fragrances in order to not attract negative attention, and the shampoo he regularly used listed peppermint near the end of the ingredients list. Russell ought to know because he’d been nosy enough to go through Tom’s personal care products when he’d used his washroom last week. When he breathed in again, he smelled the distinct odors of lavender, sweat, blood and dirt, overlaid with fear. _Fear has a smell?_ Huh! Imagine that! _Where the hell am I?_ And why was Tom lying on top of him as if he were passed out drunk? Just the thought of Tom ever drinking to the point of intoxication made Russell want to laugh. _As if that would ever happen!_ Sniffing the air again, he smelled a different emotion – arousal. And that’s when it all came back to him.

 

“ _Tom?”_ He groaned, trying to nudge his friend off of him. He vaguely remembered Tom crying over him while attempting to seal the breach in his chest with both hands. Russell had felt himself slipping away at that point, along with the blood that had been pooling underneath him. A surge of desperation had overcome him, and he’d used it to work up the energy to pull Tom down to him. Then he’d poured all his long buried emotions into what he’d intended to be a farewell kiss. Had he really done that? What had happened afterwards? Had he blacked out? He didn’t feel dead now.

 

“I don’t give a shit if I had to knock you unconscious for it, one way or another, I’m not leaving here until I’ve taken you and turned you. Your worthless piece of crap protector is dead now, so it’s just you and me.”

 

That motherfucker was still alive?! Russell had watched Tom pull the trigger. He had felt the bullet impact with Torres’ body as it blasted into his chest. How on earth was he still alive and making threats like that? And how hard had he hit Tom? Keeping his movements incredibly subtle and unnoticeable, Russell moved his fingers on top of Tom’s hand, which was resting on his chest. He got no reaction. Even though Tom seemed to be unconscious, his heart rate was galloping at a mile a minute, indicating that he had only been knocked out seconds ago. The next sound Russell heard was so sick and perverse that he instinctively released a growl from deep within his throat in response to it. He opened his eyes wide to look up at Torres who had undone his zipper and was reaching down for Tom with his greedy, lecherous hands. Not pausing to wonder why he was making animal noises, or how he was even still alive, Russell rolled over swiftly so that Tom was below him and protected, and threw a punch at Torres’ kneecap. Or at least that’s what he’d intended to do. What ended up happening was his fingernails – if fingernails were usually long, sharp, and black – hooked into that kneecap and carved it open like a Halloween pumpkin.

 

“What the fuck?!” Torres stumbled backwards, clutching at his ruined knee, and glared at Russell in shock. “ _Bullshit!_ You should be dead by now! You weren’t supposed to survive! I didn’t want to turn _you._ ”

 

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but you’re _not_ going to touch Tom or hurt him again!” Russell pushed himself up onto his knees and prepared to launch himself at Torres, when the sound of sirens caused them both to freeze in their tracks. Someone must’ve heard the gunshot and called the cops. Suddenly Torres didn’t look so eager to make a move for Tom, choosing to zip his pants back up instead as he swore up a storm.

 

“Don’t think that you can keep me from what is mine,” Torres snarled as his hateful gaze burned into Russell like a hot iron, before it flickered lustfully over Tom’s unconscious form. And then he was racing into the forest, escaping from the roar of the sirens that began to give Russell a headache.

 

 _He isn’t yours, he’s mine!_ Russell savagely thought to himself, not daring to voice his feelings aloud lest Tom should hear.

 

Everything felt too sensitive to Russell. His eardrums, the focusing of his eyes, the way Tom’s skin felt under his bloody finger pads, and even the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. Tom needed medical attention. Just by grazing his nose along the column of his friend’s neck, Russell could tell that Tom was cold, scared, and in shock. But how did he know that? And why was he sniffing at Tom in the first place? _Do I need medical attention?_ Russell swept his hands over his own body as he checked for injuries. While he’d been sure that his chest had been torn open, it was now merely sore to the touch and bruised as hell. His legs were in a bit better condition, as were his left arm and shoulder. The only wounds that were causing him an enormous amount of grief were the bloody gashes on his right arm. He could still see the deep indentations that Torres’ fangs had left behind. But even those were slowly healing, right before Russell’s very eyes. _What the hell?_ Was he hallucinating? Maybe he really was dead…

 

“Russ…,” Tom moaned weakly, reaching up to brush his fingers over Russell’s scruffy jaw.

 

Tom’s touch felt awfully real, as did the rising smell of fear and pain that was stronger now that the sheriff had regained consciousness. Those usually intense blue eyes were now lackluster and watery, gazing up at him through a veil of long eyelashes. Russell slid his hand over Tom’s cheek and onto his temple, where he pressed his palm in firmly, weaving his fingers into the sheriff’s thick, wavy hair. He didn’t know what he was doing, only that he should be doing it. Tom tensed up at the exact same instant that the veins at the back of Russell’s hand began to bulge and turn black. Those veins began to act like a conduit as Russell siphoned the pain and fear out of Tom’s body and channeled it into his own. When he realized what he was doing, he pressed his hand in tighter, trying to draw as much discomfort and distress out of Tom as he could, but something forced him to stop halfway through. A limit perhaps?

 

When the tension temporarily left Tom’s body, allowing him to breathe easier, Russell sighed with relief. “I’m going to call you an ambulance.” He removed his hand from Tom’s face to shove it into the pocket of his jeans, withdrawing his battered cell phone and dialing 9-1-1.

 

“But…” Tom looked up at Russell in disoriented confusion, his eyes scanning the shredded t-shirt that no longer revealed large gaping wounds. In fact, there was very little blood to be found on Russell anymore, except for the marks on his forearm that still resembled the bite marks of a rabid dog.

 

“Yeah, I need an ambulance,” Russell spoke into his cell phone when the operator answered, keeping his attention firmly rooted on Tom’s face. “My friend has been attacked and… sexually assaulted,” he forced himself to say. “We’re across from Derek’s café… Do you know where that is? Yes… across the street from it, down the hill near the park… My name? Russell Varon.” When the operator asked for the victim’s name, Russell did Tom the courtesy of omitting his title. “Tom Underlay… He’s conscious, but he’s badly cut up… The man who attacked him is approximately six foot three, short blond hair, brown eyes, muscular build. He was wearing a beige polo shirt and a pair of blue and black checked pants. I chased him off, but he couldn’t have gotten far… Is there?” Apparently the cruiser that had sailed past them had been dispatched in response to the gun that Tom had discharged. The dispatcher had just instructed it to turn around so they should get help quickly. “Okay, I’ll stay on the line…” But Russell muted it and quickly knelt down to Tom who was becoming unnaturally anxious again. “Tom, listen to me. When the deputy gets here, you can’t say that I was injured. I fought with Torres and he ran off. That’s it. He did not bite me or claw me, or… whatever the fuck he did.”

 

“You were dying,” Tom protested through a new wave of tears that choked up his words. “I saw…”

 

“I know.” Lowering his hand to begin stroking Tom’s face, Russell used his other to pull his t-shirt up to show off his muscular chest and full set of abs that were flawlessly smooth without a knick on them. “This is screwed up, Tom. _Really_ screwed up. But you know how people deal with the unknown and things that can’t be explained. Until we figure out what Torres was and what he did to me, we have to keep this quiet. Okay? Otherwise I might get locked up for a psych evaluation or thrown into quarantine. You know that’s how the military deals with alien encounters.”

 

“Wh—what should I say? Russ… I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

 

To prevent Tom from getting up, Russell pressed his hand lightly on his friend’s chest, not wanting him to risk moving until he got his head injury checked out. “I know you hate hospitals, but I don’t see any other option. You’re covered in cuts and bruises…” And unlike Russell, Tom was not miraculously healing on the spot. “I’ll be with you the whole time,” Russell promised.

 

“You can’t let them withdraw blood… or inject me with anything,” Tom said frantically.

 

Russell felt his heart clench at seeing the man he secretly loved lose all composure in front of him. Although he knew that Tom was quite emotionally sensitive, his friend always did such a great job of concealing those feelings. But now Tom was being overwhelmed by a fear that he could not control – an acute terror that Torres was responsible for triggering. Not knowing what else to do, Russell took hold of Tom’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “I know that. Don’t forget that I was the one who discovered the abnormalities in your blood in the first place,” he reminded him gently. “You’re just going to go in to get examined and bandaged up. And you’ll be questioned by the deputy… You know the procedure. I won’t let anyone perform any unnecessary procedures on you. I promise.”

 

“Why did we come here, Russ?” Fresh tears sprang to Tom’s eyes as he relived the horror of being attacked by a terrible red-eyed monster that should have been confined to the pages of an adult comic book. “Why did he attack _me_?”

 

That was a perfectly sensible question coming from a sheriff who did everything in his power to keep the peace, even if it meant sacrificing himself. Tom was gentle, kind, and forgiving, as well as attractive, which probably answered the question right there. He was an easy target because of the blind way that he trusted people, and this wasn’t the first time that he’d been hurt as a result of that weakness. But knowing that, Russell should have been the one to offer to help Torres with his car, instead of allowing Tom to walk out into the night with a total stranger. If he hadn’t been so damn preoccupied with his cell phone, he might have been able to pick up on telltale signs that Torres was not the man he claimed to be. The idea of Torres exerting his superior power over Tom by raping him made Russell feel both nauseated and sick with rage. But Torres didn’t only want to rape Tom, he wanted to keep him like some sort of trophy. Russell would break Torres into a million tiny, bloody pieces before he let that happen.

 

“I don’t know,” Russell answered, feeling a hopelessness that angered him further. He partially understood that Torres had targeted Tom because he had been drawn to the sheriff in much the same way Russell was. But the difference between them was that Russell would never hurt Tom to take what he wanted. Unable to bear seeing Tom so hurt and afraid, Russell bent down to embrace him, holding him tightly until the smell of fear lessened somewhat, at close to the same time as one of Beacon Hills’ cruisers pulled up along the side of the road.

 

* * *

 

“You like this, don’t you?” Jayce taunted as he ran both hands down Derek’s sides, before retracing his steps back upwards with his claws. And then he was kissing Derek again with those ratty dry lips of his, or at least attempting to, because Derek refused to grant him access to his mouth.

 

Derek abhorred it when anyone tried to talk dirty to him. He’d been trained at a young age to hate being told what he was supposed to like, or how he was supposed to like it. His old psychotic girlfriend Kate Argent had taught him well with her mental and physical abuse. It wasn’t only what was being said, but also the tone of voice of the person speaking. The low excited tone that was murmuring what was probably intended to be sweet seductions to him came off sounding like perverse, repetitive mumbo jumbo. The words didn’t matter when everything sounded the same. None of it was meant for his pleasure because he was just being used like an object to satisfy someone else’s disturbing kinks.

 

“There’s no need to be shy. That kid over there could benefit from some sex ed,” Colton reassured Derek as he kept him from worming his way loose with the grip he had on him.

 

Derek took great offense to that because Stiles was no kid. By comparison, Stiles might seem young to this group of middle aged, morally challenged wolves. But Derek knew that Stiles was no longer the high school teenager that he had first encountered several years back. The Stiles that he had fallen for had been young, impulsive, slightly childish, and lacking restraint. But the Stiles that had come to him in the kitchen to kiss him senseless, and then have the nerve to perform a mockery of scent marking on him, was undoubtedly a full grown man. While having a crush on a free-willed teenager had been a bit daring and fun, being drawn into the clutches of a man who had expressed the blatant desire to mate with him was both romantic and overwhelming. And it was those powerful feelings that he had for Stiles that filled him with shame every time Jayce raked those gritty claws over his body in a failed attempt at eroticism.

 

“Get him an ambulance!” Derek growled as soon as Jayce’s lips moved apart from his own, resisting the urge to spit at the raunchy wolf. He didn’t know how badly injured Stiles was, only that he had fallen to the ground grasping at his bleeding throat and hadn’t moved since. He could hear Stiles’ heartbeat if he listened carefully, as well as his labored breathing, but not being able to touch him was driving him mad with worry.

 

“Is that all you have to say? Hmm?” Jayce slid his hand down Derek’s well defined abs, extended his claws a fraction of a centimeter, and used them to drag bloody tracks all the way up to the wolf’s ribcage. “Or I could put my claws somewhere else…”

 

Biting back the pained moan that he could feel at the back of his throat, Derek closed his eyes tightly and tried to put up with Jayce’s unrestrained animalistic urges. But he found himself distracted by his imagination, which decided to sprint ahead of him in a mad panic. There were just too many sensitive places that Jayce could put his claws, especially since Derek hadn’t been allowed to put his clothing back on after he’d been beaten out of his wolf form. It had been too long since he’d been involved in a fight, and his slowed reaction time and diminished powers were a direct reflection of his rustiness. He didn’t know how far Jayce was willing to go to get a reaction out of him, but he hoped that it wouldn’t involve inserting those claws into him. Would he even heal if he were to be injured like that? Derek opened his eyes again and tried to keep them focused on Stiles, ignoring the despicable look and smell of the wolf who was getting off on treating him like some street performer.

 

“Okay, you’ve had your fun. Now take your new toy and let’s go,” the she-wolf ordered in obvious irritation.

 

“Not yet, Miranda. I want to show this upstart here what I’m going to do to his lover,” Jayce said with a cruel laugh. “That’ll send a message to that loser Sheriff Stilinski as well. If his son is this pathetic, think of how much worse an older version will be. They just let anyone sign up to become a deputy nowadays, don’t they?” Grabbing Derek by the knees, Jayce forced his legs open so that he could kneel between them. “Do you hear that, Derek? Silence. Max must’ve finished with Tom. Do you think that you have the stamina to last longer?”

 

Snarling viciously at Jayce, Derek refused to let the other wolf smell the fear on him. He surged forward, trying to break Colton’s hold on him, and then arched his back to pull at the weight on his legs. Anything to consume himself with rage and testosterone, which would do a good job of masking the helplessness that he felt.

 

“Nice try. But I’ve got twenty years of experience on you and the honed senses to show for it.” Burying his face at Derek’s throat, Jayce scraped his fangs along it just deep enough to make it hurt, and to coax a pained whimper out of his prey. “We don’t just turn our mates,” he calmly explained to Derek. “We’re also perfectly capable of subjugating pre-existing wolves.” His tongue snaked out to lick at the blood that was trickling down over Derek’s collarbone, lapping it up like it was the biggest turn-on.

 

Derek shut his eyes tightly again and concentrated on separating his senses from his body. He’d spent a long time in Mexico adapting to his full wolf form, and meditating to ease his mind and come to terms with all the pain and suffering that he’d endured in his life. His enthusiastic approach to meditating had put him on a new path in life – a peaceful path that involved making people smile through his natural culinary gifts. He enjoyed passing the afternoons by listening to the pleasant chatter of his elderly customers, or allowing the evenings to drag on with the more sophisticated conversations of his business clientele. It proved quite easy to concentrate on the joy that seeing Stiles again had brought into his life, instead of acknowledging what Jayce was doing to him. But all of the concentration in the world couldn’t block out the sudden flash of pain that crossed over his buttocks, forcing his eyes wide open again. Without thinking, he let loose a tortured howl, before throwing Jayce a look of disgust and betrayal. As horrible as he’d assumed these wolves were, he never would have thought that they would sink this low. That he would be subjected to another wolf’s claws across his ass as a means of punishing him.

 

“See, now you’re enjoying it,” Jayce snickered.

 

Although the rain had dyed down a few minutes ago, it was now picking up again, making the streaks of blood across Derek’s buttocks sting as the rainwater began to pelt his broken flesh. But seeing Jayce’s claws inching towards his crotch brought Derek to a new level of hysteria. How had wolves like this been allowed to survive and flourish up until this point? Surely another pack must’ve had issues with their methods and challenged them over it? Wolf packs were usually honorable, but what these sickos were doing was depraved and completely immoral. Kate Argent had been a sick bitch in a league of her own, but she had never humiliated him in front of a live audience. “ _Stiles,_ ” Derek called out desperately, forgetting about Stiles’ injury, pleading with him to do something. _Anything._ Forget the ability to heal, Derek didn’t think that he had the stomach to cope with the agony that Jayce was about to inflict. “Stiles!”

 

As if in response to Derek’s plea, Stiles struggled to get up off of the ground. His face looked haggard and his neck and shirt were painted red, but there was something about him that looked _recharged_. Perhaps it had something to do with the rainwater that seemed to be making an effort to wash away the blood that was seeping through his fingers. Or maybe it was the disturbing sight of finding his wolf at the mercy of another man.

 

“Must be the power of true love,” Colton joked, not truly believing that Stiles would have the strength to pose much of a threat.

 

Suddenly Miranda’s head shot up and her ears twitched forward, before she shouted at both Jayce and Colton. “Take him and go! The cops are here!”

 

Jayce and Colton stiffened when they heard the advancing patrol car, not noticing that Stiles had moved until he was almost on them. But Derek noticed and silently prayed that Stiles would be able to at least stall them until help could arrive. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he had seen the way that Stiles had punched Jayce. There was something about Stiles that was _different_ , more powerful, and Derek was relying on that power to rescue him. He didn’t want to be dragged off to become Jayce’s plaything. As sorry as he felt for Tom, he didn’t want to end up like the sheriff, broken like an abused toy. Or locked up in a room somewhere, only to be let out when Jayce – or another one of his pack – felt up to another round of sadistic sex games. He never wanted to be controlled by another ruthless monster like that ever again.

 

Just as Colton was yanking Derek to his feet, Stiles appeared from nowhere to lash out at the older wolf’s face, punching him with all his might. While the punch wasn’t as powerful as Colton’s had been, it was enough to get the wolf to release Derek in order to fight back. That was all the leeway Stiles needed to grab Derek by the arm and pull him up and out of reach.

 

Derek gritted his teeth hard to stifle the moan of pain that that movement caused. It felt like he was covered in two dozen or more deep paper cuts that hurt many times more than being punched or kicked would have. If he shifted or moved in the wrong way, one of those cuts tore open deeper, intensifying the miserable pain that he was already feeling. But none hurt worse than the ones on his backside. He wanted to growl angrily at Jayce for causing him such an indignity, but ended up swallowing down tears of shame instead. What had he done to attract the attention of these cruel bastards? He had come back to Beacon Hills to settle down and live a quiet, normal life, not be drawn back into another bloody, supernatural war. That was part of the reason why he had left in the first place. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him the hell alone?

 

When Jayce snarled and leapt forward to try and snatch back his new plaything, Stiles knocked him out of the air with a wild haymaker, exhibiting the skills of a vengeful boxer. “My father is on his way up here right now,” Stiles warned when Miranda tried to come at him. “My cell phone has been on the whole time, recording this entire _incident_. And you can be sure that when he gets up here, he’s going to gun you down without a second thought.”

 

Sure enough, the sirens began to get louder as the cruiser reached the small parking lot beside Derek’s café, and kept coming.

 

“Get him another time,” Colton growled at Jayce as he pulled on his arm. “We don’t have time for this shit. You know what will happen if they identify us!”

 

“You are _so_ dead the next time we meet!” Jayce threatened Stiles as he was led off by Colton and Miranda. They tore off running down the other side of the hill, disappearing into the trees and out of sight.

 

“Derek, come here,” Stiles said quietly as he stooped down to pick up his wolf’s clothing.

 

But Derek didn’t want to go to Stiles. Not when he was trembling with anger, hurt, and shame. He was the wolf. He should be the one protecting Stiles and not the other way around. Anyway, he couldn’t put his clothes back on even if he wanted to. He was too sore to even contemplate pulling those tight black jeans on overtop the slashes across his buttocks. While he did have the power to heal, it didn’t happen instantaneously. Some wounds took longer to heal than others. How the hell was he going to take a shower tonight? And why was he even worrying about such idiotic things when Stiles was still hurt?  

 

While Stiles was bending down to pick up every last article of clothing that he found on the muddy grass, Derek heard the sounds of the siren reverse directions and begin to fade away. The damn car was leaving! Why the hell was it leaving?!

 

“Shit,” Stiles swore softly as he approached Derek. “I thought that it was actually going to come up here.” When Derek gave Stiles a questioning look, the deception became obvious.

 

“You didn’t call your father, did you?”

 

“I dropped my cell phone into the cove yesterday, so I had no way of contacting him. I just thought that it was a lucky coincidence that a deputy would be responding to a crime in this location… so I bluffed.” Stiles gave Derek a muted look of sympathy that did nothing to disguise the roiling feeling of hatred inside of him. “What’s wrong? They’re still clean,” Stiles said reassuringly, holding out Derek’s scandalous black underwear for him to take. “It’s just a bit of rainwater… Better than giving the old ladies a heart attack with that shapely ass of yours,” he joked lightly.

 

“Stiles… your throat,” Derek said urgently, needing to change the subject so that he wouldn’t have to explain why he couldn’t put his clothes back on.

 

“I guess it wasn’t as deep as I’d thought.” Stiles removed his fingers from his neck to show Derek that nothing vital had been severed when Miranda had attacked him.

 

“But it looked really bad…”

 

“Silly wolf. I just overreacted and freaked us both out.”

 

But Derek had seen the way Stiles had been bleeding. How could the bleeding have stopped on its own? “I think that I’m just going to return to the house in my wolf form,” he said lamely. “All this rain is making me really cold.”

 

“Okay, we can call my dad from inside your place,” Stiles agreed.

 

“What for?!” Why would Stiles want to call his father? The wolf pack was gone and neither of them were mortally injured. Why involve Stilinski in any of this?

 

“Because… you were attacked,” Stiles said slowly, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he needed to be explaining it to Derek in the first place. “This wasn’t just about two wolves fighting over territory, Derek. This is about some kinky old wolf trying to make you his bitch. I’m sure that my dad is going to be just as pissed about this whole incident as I am.”

 

“No, he isn’t. Because you’re _not_ going to tell him,” Derek snarled. “Don’t think that I’m going to go down to your new place of employment to report a group of wolves trying to turn me into their sex toy. I’m not going to let anyone humiliate me like that!”

 

“Derek, whoa, calm down,” Stiles said gently. “That’s not what I meant. This is not about my job or about anyone wanting to humiliate you. This is about protecting you. We have to report this for your own safety. They’re going to come back for you, unless we can put enough men and women on the streets to find them first.”

 

Not allowing Stiles to comfort him, Derek backed away, already on the verge of transforming back into his wolf form. “No! Do what you have to for Tom, but leave me out of it.” Without giving Stiles the chance to see the full extent of his injuries, or argue with him further, Derek sprinted back down the hill on all four paws, keeping his tail low to avoid it accidentally brushing up against where his flesh still hurt.


	7. Chapter 7

If there was one place in all of Beacon Hills that Sheriff Stilinski absolutely dreaded stepping foot in, it definitely had to be Beacon Hills Hospital. Last month he’d begun to keep track of how long he spent in the hospital every week and had come up with a total of 16.5 hours. With an average work week of 40 hours, plus 10 or more hours in obligatory overtime, that came to 33%. An entire third of his work week saw him lurking around the emergency room, interviewing victims of violent crime, protecting vital eyewitnesses, or trying to identify whatever new monster/humanoid species Mother Nature’s twisted imagination had decided to curse his town with.

 

What Stilinski really hated about the hospital was dealing with patients that he knew personally, and that included Sheriff Tom Underlay. Nothing made him more uncomfortable than having to come down to the hospital to see how badly injured or traumatized one of his friends or acquaintances was.

 

Stilinski pushed away from the wall where he’d been leaning when Nurse Melissa McCall exited one of the private rooms for recovering patients. When she spotted him waiting there, she reached back to ensure that she’d properly shut the door behind her before she approached him. “How is he?” Stilinski asked, trying not to let his own guilt overwhelm him. He never should’ve blackmailed Tom into coming to Beacon Hills. Regardless of whatever mutation his counterpart from Homestead was hiding, Tom hadn’t deserved to be attacked like that, especially not after the effort he had gone to to rescue Stiles.

 

Melissa stopped in front of Stilinski and placed her hands on her hips in silent anger. “Not good. _Whoever_ attacked him seemed to have been toying with him. His wounds are deep enough to hurt, but superficial enough not to be serious. The worst of the wounds are the claw marks on his lower back and the bite marks at the back of his neck. It kind of looks like he was attacked by an animal that wanted to play with its food before eating it.”

 

“So you don’t believe that he was attacked by a man, like he claims?” Actually, Stilinski had a hard time believing that himself because he had been the first one to respond to the scene of the crime. When the call had come over the radio identifying the victim of sexual assault as an adult male, he’d thought that the dispatcher had made a mistake. According to statistics, most male victims of sexual assault failed to report the incident, and those that did identified their attacker as someone they were involved with. So he’d been quite upset to find Tom – a fellow law enforcer, and one of equal rank – lying on the ground and bleeding from what had originally looked like knife wounds, with his clothes torn in several obvious places. Getting him to describe his attacker had been painful enough, but trying to extract the details of the manner in which he’d been attacked had been virtually impossible. And the look on Russell Varon’s face… Any doubts Stilinski may have had about those two being intimate with each other had quickly been washed away as soon as he’d caught Russell holding Tom protectively in his arms like that.

 

“Is that what he told you?” Melissa frowned and shook her head. “He’s so shaken up that he can’t get his story straight. One minute he’s describing a man, and the next he’s referring to his injuries as bite and claw marks – which they are by the way. There’s no doubt in my mind that he was attacked by a werewolf.”

 

“How deep are they?” Stilinski forced himself to ask.

 

“Not deep enough, if you’re asking what I think you’re asking.”

Stilinski had been friends with Melissa for so long that it no longer surprised him when she filled in the blanks for him. Their friendship had been nurtured over years of professional collaboration and co-parenting. Both of their occupations required long hours and a heck of a lot of sacrifices, so Stilinski had often found himself babysitting Melissa’s son Scott, while Melissa had entertained Stiles on many an impromptu sleepover. They were both single parents slaving to make ends meet, and that was why they understood each other so well. “That is what I’m asking. You’re one-hundred percent sure that he can’t be turned by those bite marks on the back of his neck?”

 

“Like I said, they’re deep, but not deep _enough._ ” After a short pause, Melissa uncomfortably fidgeted before looking Stilinski straight in the face with her dark unwavering eyes. “About that other thing you asked for…”

 

“The blood sample.” Stilinski felt like an asshole for requesting it in the first place, but he had to know what was different about Tom and if there was even the slightest possibility that Stiles was suffering from the same abnormality. Not everything could be revealed with a blood sample, but at least it was somewhere to start. This would probably be the only opportunity he got to pass off the request for a blood sample as something routine, as opposed to attempting to get one illegally. Besides, Tom was probably already accustomed to needles seeing as how Homestead and Beacon Hills shared an identical policy regarding mandatory drug testing for all sworn peace officers. What would one extra off-the-books blood sample hurt?

 

“Apparently Sheriff Underlay has an extreme aversion to hospitals. He’s barely cooperating as it is. I can’t predict how he’s going to react to me taking an unnecessary blood sample. There’s also the fact that he passed out about ten minutes ago due to the stress of his ordeal, making it difficult for me to get his consent for any samples. And let’s not forget that his male partner won’t leave his side even for a cup of coffee…”

 

“Make up whatever excuse that you have to, but one way or the other, I need that blood sample. I know this sounds really callous…”

 

“Oh, you have no idea,” Melissa said sarcastically.

 

“But Stiles just hasn’t been the same since he fell in the water and I’m willing to bet that Tom has the answers to what’s wrong with him. You weren’t there, Melissa. You didn’t see the way that man swam around the cove as if it were his own private fish tank. I’m telling you, something is _off_ about him.”

 

“Fine. You can come in with me and make it look legit because I hate lying to a patient.”

 

That was just like Melissa to force him to do his own dirty work. He really had no right to ask her for such unethical favors, but he would cross any line if it was in Stiles’ best interests. Stilinski followed her back into Tom’s private room, finding himself the target of a set of smoldering brown eyes that were glaring daggers at him. But Russell said nothing. The park ranger sat still and deathly quiet by Tom’s bedside, holding the sheriff’s hand in between both of his own. It was clearly evident that something was bothering the worn-out looking man, but Stilinski had no idea what that something was. Tom was lying in the bed – unconscious – looking horribly drained and ashen. His left arm was bandaged up and there were bandages visible on the back of his neck, as well as high up on his chest. The werewolf who had attacked him had done too good a job of marking his territory.

 

“Russell, why don’t you go down to the cafeteria and get yourself a coffee – on me? Nurse McCall here is just going to take a blood sample… make sure that whatever animal attacked Tom didn’t have rabies or some other infectious disease.” There. That lie hadn’t sounded too bad.

 

But Russell refused to budge as he eyed both Melissa and Stilinski suspiciously. “Tom and I both told you that he was attacked by a _man_ , not an animal. So there is no need for you to take a blood sample from him.”

 

“But the cuts on his arm, back and chest were animalistic in nature, most likely from a creature with long claws. And then there are the bite marks on the back of his neck, which were most likely caused by a set of fangs…” Stilinski thought that the idea of rabies would have caused Russell to panic and allow Melissa to take the blood sample, but the ranger’s reaction made him realize how he had sorely underestimated Tom’s partner. This was not a simple-minded man who gave visitors to the Glades tours for a living. No, Stilinski was dealing with a clever and untrusting man who studied both the animals in his territory as well as the people.

 

“Seems like you have a better idea of _what_ attacked Tom than either of us do, so why don’t you tell me _what the hell_ you’re trying to cover up here, Sheriff?” Russell demanded to know, the fury in his voice causing Melissa to drop the syringe out of sight and give Stilinski a look of warning. “You’re such a hypocrite, threatening Tom over his supposed knowledge of a conspiracy in Homestead when you didn’t have the decency to warn him about the potential danger in your own town. Where’s your fucking transparency now, huh?”

 

Not one to respond well to aggression, Stilinski tried to brush off Russell’s accusations in order to get what he was after. “Melissa, just take the blood sample so we can leave these two in peace,” he said, trying to sound like a nice guy.

 

“You think you can do whatever you like to Tom while he’s unconscious because he can’t refuse treatment?” Russell laughed bitterly at Stilinski, and then shook his head at Melissa when she tried to approach the bed again. “Do yourselves a favor and contact the head of staff down at Homestead Memorial Regional Hospital. She can confirm that I am Tom’s next of kin and have been given the authority to make all decisions regarding his medical treatment if he is unable to do so himself. And I’m refusing all medical treatment as of now. This room has been paid for until tomorrow, so Tom will stay here overnight in order to rest. But we’re going back to Homestead in the morning. We’ll be sure to file a report with our own sheriff’s department over this disgusting incident.”

 

Not only was Russell far too good at reading people, but he was also willing to renege on the open discussion that Tom had promised in order to protect his friend. This was not a man that Stilinski could bluff or negotiate with. “Are you sure that Tom would appreciate you speaking for him like this?” Stilinski challenged, knowing fully well that he was fighting a losing battle.

 

“How much do you think Tom is going to care about your secret agenda after he was nearly raped by one of your local psychopaths? A man that you keep implying is more animal than man.”

 

“You seem to have misunderstood what I--.” Stilinski and Melissa both started when the door to the room flung inwards, revealing Stiles with Derek in tow. “Son, now is not a good time,” Stilinski said sternly. “I never said that there was a man with animalistic qualities,” he continued, doing his best to talk condescendingly to Russell in an attempt to get him under control. “What I meant was that sometime before or after the attack, Tom might have been clawed up by a wild animal--.”

 

“ _Dad!”_ Stiles interrupted, shoving the door closed behind him. “They know what they were attacked by,” he blurted out, keeping an arm around a very spooked looking Derek. “So this would go a lot faster if we all stopped pretending that Tom was attacked by two separate creatures, because we all know that he was attacked by a werewolf. Just some of us are more comfortable with talking about it than others.”

 

“How the hell do you know that he was attacked by a werewolf?!” Stilinski just about shouted, dropping his act because his impulsive son had just thrown all the cards onto the table without any warning.

 

“Because Derek was attacked by a werewolf from the same group.”

 

“Attacked as in…?” Could this possibly get any worse? Stilinski had just seen Derek a couple of days ago. They’d had a nice chat about Stiles and how peaceful Beacon Hills had become. Why would anyone want to attack a non-confrontational wolf who was doing his best to steer clear of any packs, as well as avoiding drawing attention to himself?

 

“Yeah…” Stiles said bitterly. “Melissa, would you mind…?”

 

Melissa hesitated for a brief second before moving towards Derek, not bothering to look over in Stilinski’s direction or consult him first. “Sure. Come on, Derek. Join me down the hall for a little _talk._ ”

 

“Stiles?” Derek questioned, as if he needed Stiles’ reassurance that going with Melissa was what he should be doing.

 

“It’s okay, Derek. You know you can trust Melissa.”

 

Looking slightly unsure, but trusting Stiles’ judgment, Derek followed Melissa out of the room. But not before he tilted his head curiously in Russell’s direction. The look those two exchanged had Stilinski frantically looking the park ranger over from head to toe. His shirt was covered in blood and ripped worse than Tom’s, but Stilinski had just assumed that the blood was Tom’s. And the rips might have been from a failed attack. But what if they weren’t? “Russell, you weren’t injured in the fight, were you?”

 

“If you’d ever seen me in a fight, you wouldn’t need to ask me that,” Russell said rudely, not letting Stilinski get away with changing the subject. Stilinski may have made a very terrible mistake by trying to coerce that blood sample from Tom.

 

“Russell, Tom wasn’t…?” Stiles asked with enough hesitance and compassion that he somehow managed to bring Russell’s volatile temper down a few notches.

 

“No. I got to him in time.”

 

Breathing a sigh of relief, Stiles puffed himself up a bit, taking on an air of professionalism as he filled in the others on what he knew about the situation. On any other day, Stilinski would have been proud to see his son holding himself up tall and proud in the manner of a true deputy. But there was something about the way Stiles was avoiding eye contact that said that they would not be hearing the entire story from him. “As far as I know, there are a total of four werewolves in this pack. They came to Homestead looking to replace two members of their pack that they disposed of in another town.”

 

“Uh, Stiles?” Russell broke in before Stiles could continue.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Are you seriously going to continue to refer to these psychopaths as _werewolves?”_

 

“That’s what they are,” Stiles said firmly. When Russell sat back in his chair and kept his mouth shut, Stiles continued. “They called the leader Max. That was the one who attacked Tom. The others used the names Jayce, Colton, and Miranda. They’re all pushing close to fifty, which is why the leader went after Tom. He wanted someone older to make his mate.”

 

“Hold on a minute,” Russell said with barely contained anger. “First of all, Tom isn’t that old. Second of all, _Max_ – if that’s his real name – did a real good job of traumatizing Tom with the rough way he went after him. So I doubt that a mate was what he was after. More like a victim to abuse and then kill.”

 

“That’s probably how it looked,” Stiles said sadly. “Not all werewolves are like this, but some of them use their power to subdue and control others. Max didn’t want a mate like most people want a spouse. He wanted a playmate that he could control. If you hadn’t intervened, he might have come close to killing Tom, but he wouldn’t have actually ended his life. Tom was bitten, wasn’t he?”

 

“He was. But not deep enough,” Stilinski answered, still cautiously watching Russell’s reaction to everything that was being said. So far, aside from looking pissed enough to put a bullet in somebody’s head, Russell was revealing no other emotions.

 

“That’s how an alpha wolf turns a human into one of their pack, with the bite. Normally they go for teenagers because younger humans have a higher survival rate. That’s what I meant when I said that Max had wanted someone _older_. Someone who was not a teenager.”

 

“Did those other wolves say _why_ Tom was targeted? Aside from him being older than the usual prey?” Stilinski asked.

 

“Max liked the look of him,” Stiles replied bluntly.

 

“Well, the next time he gets close enough to _look_ at Tom, I’m going to blow his fucking head off,” Russell threatened.

 

“You said that they were down by two pack members,” Stilinski prompted Stiles. “So Derek was attacked for the same reason?”

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said curtly, obviously uncomfortable about discussing what had happened to the wolf he had been harboring a crush for over the past few years. “We managed to fight them off… and they took off when they thought that they were going to be pursued by a bunch of deputies. But Derek was cut up pretty badly afterwards… and he isn’t healing. So I convinced him to come in for treatment.”

 

“What do you mean he isn’t _healing_?” The look on Russell’s face was now a mixture of disbelief and shock.

 

“Oh… because…”

 

“Stiles, sometimes I really ought to prohibit you from speaking,” Stilinski muttered. “Like Stiles said, not all werewolves are aggressive and violent. Derek is one of the helpful, law-abiding wolves in Beacon Hills. Or maybe _the only_ one at the moment.”

 

“And werewolves heal?” Russell asked with poorly disguised interest, seeming to have no difficulty digesting what he had just been told. Which made him either incredibly open-minded or well adjusted to bizarre dealings with non-human entities. Like maybe those orange creatures in the water.

 

“Most of the time. It depends on the severity of the attack and the strength of the wolf. Some can heal instantaneously. For others it might take a couple of days. Then there’s the psychological aspect…” Stiles shrugged, met Russell’s attentive gaze, and then glanced in Tom’s direction. “Did he pass out or was he sedated?”

 

“He passed out.”

 

“So… he should be awake again in a while…” Stiles patted Stilinski on the shoulder and gave him his widest, phoniest smile. “I’ll take over from here, Dad. Why don’t you go get yourself a coffee down in the cafeteria – on me? You’ve been working for eleven hours straight and could use a break.”

 

 _Unbelievable!_ Stilinski could not believe that his own son was using that distracting coffee bullshit line on him. How many other sly maneuvers had Stiles picked up from him over the years? “I don’t need anymore caffeine in my system,” Stilinski protested, wondering if there would be another time for him to get that blood sample. “Stiles, why are there traces of blood on your collar?”

 

“Like I said, Dad, Derek was pretty badly cut up,” Stiles said with relative ease. “I left descriptions of the wolves with the dispatcher down at headquarters. Maybe you can find a match with wanted fugitives from a neighboring town. They were in an awful hurry to escape so they wouldn’t run into any law enforcement officers, which leads me to believe that you’ll find a body count in their wake.”

 

Knowing that he couldn’t argue with Stiles without looking suspicious, especially since Russell didn’t seem to want him in the room anymore, Stilinski had no choice but to do something productive and follow up on those descriptions.

 

* * *

 

When Derek had arrived back in Beacon Hills, he had been pleasantly surprised to go for days without sensing – or hearing the howl of – another werewolf. Those days had eventually turned into weeks, and then months. Apparently Scott had come back for a short time after graduating, but then he’d disappeared again for some veterinarian conference. Even when he had been back, Derek had not seen or heard from him, which hadn’t bothered him at all. With Scott temporarily away and his pack off in the pursuance of a further education, Beacon Hills had been left with a wolf population of zero. And if there weren’t any wolves, there weren’t any power struggles or territorial aggression. It had been so nice to just go about his life unharassed and unchallenged, doing whatever made him happy. And nothing made him happier than owning a café and making other people happy, especially his elderly customers. Because if he didn’t give them a place to pass their afternoons, they might wind up getting lost in the streets, or being scammed by opportunists. That was just the type of town that they were living in nowadays.

 

But it didn’t matter how hard he tried to stay out of the workings of the werewolf world. He could conceal himself underground, leave the state, or fake his own death and they would still find him. They always found him. Whether it be hunters, rival wolves, or people who were just plain nasty, they always found him.

 

Not only were his wounds not healing, but his hands wouldn’t stop trembling, and his super sensitive wolf hearing would not shut off. He was on edge and looking for threats around every corner, and behind every door. He’d pleaded with Melissa to give him something to calm him down, and she had, but his body had metabolized the tranquilizer far too quickly. Before he’d even been able to appreciate the sensation of his muscles relaxing and his mind floating adrift, his wolf healing powers had run the tranquilizer through his system, and then flushed it out. So he could still counteract the effects of hospital grade drugs, but he couldn’t heal the embarrassing cuts that stung with every move he made. Melissa had been kind and understanding, trying to alleviate his concerns by promising him that she would never tell another soul of what she’d seen, but Derek’s cheeks had still turned a crimson red when he’d had to undress for her to treat his injuries.

 

“You’re progressing rather quickly,” Derek commented when he felt a distinct presence behind him. And now he had to deal with that _other problem._ “How did you find me?”

 

“I looked,” came Russell’s calm voice from a safe distance outside of Derek’s personal space.

 

“Let me rephrase that,” Derek said as he turned to size up the park ranger. “Did you use your sense of smell or your augmented hearing?” He had no problem with being direct and skipping over any pretend discomfort. Why waste time with phony chitchat? He could smell Russell’s altered scent from across the room and he was sure that Russell could do likewise, so he wasn’t going to treat the man like an idiot by denying what they both knew. And that was that Russell was now a werewolf.

 

“Hearing,” Russell said smoothly, his expression a tangled mess of hatred, fear, confusion, and worry.

 

The man had every reason to worry. Derek had never encountered a new werewolf this old before. The oldest he was familiar with had been in her early twenties, but she hadn’t lived long enough to make much of a record of it. Derek had been concerned that Tom wouldn’t survive the bite, especially because his intense emotions of pain and fear would have interfered with his ability to heal. But what kind of emotions had Russell been exhibiting when he’d been bitten? The bite hadn’t killed him, so he was much stronger than Derek had originally given him credit for.

 

“But I do seem to be able to identify your _scent_ now,” Russell added. “I could probably find you with either method…, which freaks me out by the way.”

 

“I can imagine.” There was a long pause, long enough to make Derek uncomfortably turn back around to survey the front entrance of the hospital down below. He’d been up on the roof of the hospital before, but never for a good reason. The roof was usually the best vantage point to keep an eye out for potential threats, which is why he had chosen to come up here in the first place. He didn’t want those freaks to catch him off guard unprepared in a hospital bed. But the roof was blanketed in a darkness that made Derek feel more vulnerable than he wanted to let on. “You’re not asking the question that you want to ask,” Derek said tightly.

 

“Because I don’t think that now is the best time to ask it,” Russell countered, sounding just as uncomfortable.

 

Derek had known when Russell and Tom had entered his establishment that they were good people. They cared a great deal about each other, although Tom had come across as peaceable, as opposed to Russell who could be a bit antagonistic when it came to looking out for his companion. They also cared about what happened to Stiles, and knowing that meant a lot to Derek. But for Russell to go through such a drastic transformation and hold off on his questions in case Derek weren’t feeling up to it… That took a lot of compassion and character. “Then why are you here?”

 

“Because Stiles wants to know where you went. He’s worried about you. I left him with Tom because I trust him. I don’t know why I trust him, but I just do.”

 

If Russell instinctively knew that Stiles was trustworthy, then his wolf senses were working quite well. “Stiles worries a lot,” Derek said fondly. “That’s one of his most endearing qualities. But I’m fine now.” Once the lie had left his lips, Derek inwardly groaned because he had forgotten what talking to another wolf was like. If Russell was already sensing his way around, he would no doubt hear the untruth in his voice. Derek backed away from the edge of the roof and gestured to the open door leading back into the hospital. “Are you going back inside?”

 

“Not yet.” With no warning, Russell moved towards Derek with his right arm outstretched.

 

Derek automatically released his fangs and growled loudly at Russell when the other wolf suddenly grabbed for his bare forearm. He hadn’t sensed any animosity from him but he should have known better. All newly created wolves were violent and difficult to train, and of course Russell would be no different. But just as Derek was preparing to swipe his claws across Russell’s face, he felt a surge of power run through him. It was a strange sensation, one he had never felt before. Hesitating with his claws raised in the air, he looked down at where Russell’s clawed grip was grabbing his arm. He was shocked to see the flow of blackness traveling down through his veins and into Russell’s hand in a continuous flow. Russell was absorbing his pain and fear and making it his own. Although Derek had selflessly performed this same procedure on others countless times, no one had ever done it for him before. Very slowly, he sheathed his claws and lowered his arm, giving the other wolf a look of intense gratitude as soon as he was released. “How did you know how to do that?” He asked in bewilderment.

 

“I touched Tom earlier and it just happened.” Russell rubbed his hand up and down his arm as if he were cold, trying to dispel the negative feelings that the action had planted in him.

 

“Thank you,” Derek said with relief, hoping that what Russell had taken away would be enough to help trigger his own healing powers into doing something about his injuries. “Now I can see why Tom is so enthralled by you.”

 

“Huh?”

 

When Russell stopped to stare at him, Derek returned the look in confusion, uncomprehending what he had just done. “What? It’s not like you didn’t know. Why would you be with him if your feelings weren’t reciprocated?”

 

“Okay, hold on a minute,” Russell said, abruptly silencing whatever else Derek had been on the verge of saying. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“Tom is your mate, isn’t he?” But as soon as Derek asked that question, he realized that he had just tampered with a friendship that hadn’t been anything more than that.

 

Russell groaned and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “So you thought that Tom and I were _lovers?”_

“Not just me. Stiles too. And Sheriff Stilinski judging by the way he was looking at you. You two just act like a married couple…” Maybe now would be a good time to shut up.

 

“I’ve been dropping hints for Tom for the past year and he’s never taken the bait. I even take him out to dinner once a week and he thinks it’s nothing but two friends hanging out after work. But now you’re telling me that he’s _enthralled_ by me? How do you know that?”

 

Derek felt like groaning himself, but kept his own feelings under control so as not to make the situation any worse. He didn’t want to be held responsible for Russell acting on anything he said if Tom was reluctant to move past the friendship stage. Or maybe Tom genuinely had no idea how Russell felt about him. In that case, wouldn’t interfering be a good thing? If someone had pushed Stiles his way all those years ago, he would’ve been a million times happier for it. _What should I say?_ He couldn’t deny that Tom was attracted to Russell because it would be a cruel lie. But he also couldn’t encourage Russell to pursue Tom in case it disturbed their already comfortable relationship.

 

“Shit, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Russell finally said, relieving Derek of the need to comment. “I already fucked things up by kissing him when I thought I was going to die back there. If he blows me off after that… well… I don’t know.”

 

Derek was definitely not going to give his opinion on Russell’s poor self control. Granted, the man had thought that he was dying, so his actions had been completely justified. But Derek was not going to be the one to tell him that.

 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.. later. But now I have some questions,” Russell said, sounding just a bit guilty for having expressed his own desires. “I would’ve waited until later, but I seem to be feeling more aggressive than usual and I thought that you could help me with that.”

 

“I could definitely help you with that.” Derek gestured to the door, wanting to see Stiles again before he sat down to begin mentoring a new wolf.


	8. Chapter 8

Even with the bedroom lights off and the curtains drawn, Tom could still see the rows upon rows of 18th century dolls staring down at him from the shelves that they were posed on, on the opposite wall. He imagined that their perfectly round glass eyes were watching him lying in their previous owner’s bed, attempting to sleep in a room smothered in frilly lace and washed in a stale, musty perfume. Why had he allowed Derek to stick him in this room in the first place? There had been three to choose from. Wouldn’t the room that had belonged to the nanny have been more tolerable with its sour stench of decades old cigars and dusty talcum powder? At least it had had a properly sized bed for an adult and a lock on the door. It had also been starkly decorated with magazine clippings, which would have been preferable to the sea of creepy faces that Tom had to keep forcing himself to ignore.

 

 _No! I’ll take these dolls over that crime scene any day!_ Tom continued to stare blindly up at the fuzzy black ceiling, purposely avoiding the shiny glass eyes that he could still see in the dark. If the tiny window by his bedside had had blinds instead of lace curtains, he wouldn’t have had to put up with the moonlight shining in and illuminating all the hypnotic dolls and figurines that lined the shelves and chest of drawers, as well as the antique vanity mirror that sat in one cramped corner of the room.

 

When Derek had suggested that he take the guestroom at the end of the hall, Tom had immediately protested upon seeing what lay inside it. At first glance it had seemed like the perfect setting for a possessed child from a horror movie. However, as soon as Derek had casually mentioned that the original homeowners had fallen prey to a home invasion, _and_ had been tragically murdered in the nanny’s more spacious room, with the killer committing suicide in the son’s room, Tom had quickly claimed the daughter’s suffocating prison of dolls as a place to rest for the night.

 

If it had been up to Tom, he would have gotten back into his cruiser as soon as he’d been discharged from the hospital, and driven back to Homestead – the town that he understood a hell of a lot better than Beacon Hills. What with all its bizarre occurrences, human sacrifices, unexplained disappearances, and _animal_ attacks, it was a wonder that Beacon Hills had yet to be put under quarantine by the military. Wasn’t the government responsible for keeping tabs on anything foreign and controversial that had the potential to taint the country as a whole? In Tom’s eyes, a preternatural threat more than warranted the use of road blocks, an enforced curfew, and high powered assault weapons. Or… maybe that was his fear talking – the uncomfortable sensation of violation and imminent danger that he hadn’t been able to shake since last night’s attack. Stiles had managed to convince him to stay – just barely – by explaining that it was in his best interests, as well as bringing him up to speed on Beacon Hills’ tarnished reputation with the supernatural. And who could forget the town’s rising body count?!

 

_As if adjusting to life as a hybrid hadn’t been enough…_

Tom’ entire body stiffened the instant he heard the hallway outside his door give a long, tortuous sigh. The floorboards of Derek’s haunted house creaked something awful along the second floor. It didn’t matter how hard anyone stepped on them, or how they placed their weight, attempting to avoid the more sunken areas, the protesting groans of the old warped floorboards could still be heard throughout the house . That had to be why _the wolf_ – Derek – had never considered turning the place into a bed and breakfast. Anyone getting up to use the washroom in the middle of the night would create one heck of a ruckus, which a being with enhanced hearing wouldn’t be able to tolerate. But the somewhat rotten wood that lay beneath the musty burgundy carpeting was only one of many problems that Derek had with his café/humble abode.

 

Although Tom had been born and raised in Homestead, a fairly old town in its own right, he had never seen such old pipes in any washroom that he’d ever used in the past, nor was the pinkish water that spouted out of the taps very reassuring. There had also been a mild – yet foul – odor coming from the back of the hallway, the area where the three lonely guest rooms were located. It could have been from mold and mildew, or remnants of the previous occupants when they had been in their last stages of life. Tom had been polite enough not to mention the offensive air failing to circulate along the second floor, but Russell had apparently been too offended by it to keep his mouth shut.

 

 _“What the hell is that stench?”_ Russell had asked as he narrowed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

 

 _“I hadn’t noticed,”_ Derek had responded dryly, continuing to lead them to the end of the hall.

 

 _“Seriously?”_ Russell had given Derek a goading look of disbelief that he only reserved for really close friends, which had surprised Tom because the park ranger no longer trusted that many people. _“You really can’t smell that?”_

 

Derek had turned briefly, given Russell a bored look, and frowned. _“I’d have to be dead to not be able to smell that, Russell. I’m just choosing to ignore it until I have no choice but to deal with it.”_ Much like he had been addressed, Derek had spoken to Russell in a casual, sarcastic manner that he probably would never have used with a complete stranger. But wasn’t that what Russell was to Derek? Nothing more than a stranger who had been drawn to Derek’s town by unfortunate circumstances?

 

_“Yeah, but, what about your guests?”_

 

_“For the last time, this is not a B and B. I only need the one bedroom, so I’ve only renovated the one bedroom. End of story.”_

 

Tom had tried to go along with the casual, oddly familiar, exchange between his best friend and the _werewolf_ who owned the café downstairs and baked cakes for a living. But the whole situation that he’d been unwillingly dragged into felt too surreal and outrageous to accept as truth. Back in the borrowed cruiser that Stiles had picked them up from the hospital in, Beacon Hills’ sheriff’s son – and newly appointed deputy – had given him an abbreviated version of last night’s events. That had included what Tom had missed while unconscious, details on the out-of-town wolf gang, and what Derek had shared with him about Russell’s bizarre transformation.

 

While Tom considered himself to be a very open-minded kind of guy, he was having a lot of trouble assimilating all the unsettling information that had been dumped on him. And Russell as a werewolf? How was he going to go about accepting _that_ earth-shattering bit of knowledge?

 

 _“If you’d seen the last two places Derek used to live in, you wouldn’t be so judgmental,”_ Stiles had joked from behind them.

 

Up ahead, Derek and Russell had exchanged a comradely look, before continuing on to the last bedroom on the right. What had happened between the two men that had enabled them to overcome the awkwardness with which they had first met? Was this some sort of _wolf bonding_ that Derek had failed to mention? Tom was still having a hard time believing that either man was capable of growing fangs and claws on a full moon. Despite what he’d seen the night before, he was still desperate to find a logical explanation for it all. Something less controversial than werewolves, pack mentality, and humanoids mating like a pair of animals in heat.

 

“Hey, Tom! Are you asleep?”

 

And then there was that _other matter_ that Tom kept pushing aside…

 

For a moment, Tom debated over whether to respond to Stiles’ obnoxious stage whisper, which had rattled his nerves and automatically increased his grip on the service pistol that he’d concealed underneath the sheets. He would not allow himself to be caught off guard by any manner of being, werewolf or otherwise, ever again. The next time that vicious, slobbering _wolf_ tried to touch him, Tom would not hesitate to put him down. _If_ werewolves could be hurt by bullets… That was something that Tom had forgotten to ask at the end of Stiles’ flowery little presentation on what went bump in the night in Beacon Hills.

 

“I’m coming in.”

 

“Wait--.”

 

At the sound of the doorknob turning, Tom struggled to pull his firearm out, getting it tangled in the sheets in his haste, and ended up temporarily blinded when Stiles flicked on the overhead light on his way in.

 

“Did I interrupt something?” Stiles asked with a wry smile, looking like he’d just caught Tom in the middle of an indecent act.

 

“I’m sure that you would’ve still entered, regardless as to what you were interrupting,” Tom said in annoyance as he blinked to clear the colorful spots from his vision.

 

“Oh, that’s what you were doing.” Stiles closed the door behind him, taking note of the weapon that Tom had placed on the comforter by his right side.

 

“What did you think I was doing?” Tom asked in exasperation.

 

“Jerking off,” Stiles replied with a dull shrug. “I dunno. It helps to relieve stress. You should try it sometime.” And then he was strolling confidently into the room with a tray of food, not paying attention to the withering look that Tom cast in his direction for the offensive suggestion. “Derek made you one of his famous meat pies, and heated you up a bowl of corn potage. The tea is from yesterday though, so don’t get too excited over it.” He placed the tray down next to Tom and waited expectantly.

 

Tom glanced at the food, and then back at his gun, trying to decide which he could temporarily do without. His left arm was badly sprained from the fall, as well as sporting several claw marks from that bastard _Max_ , which meant that only his right arm was mobile. He had outright refused the sling back at the hospital, but Russell had threatened to leave him there if he didn’t follow the doctors orders, so Tom had grudgingly allowed Nurse McCall to bandage up and immobilize his left arm. Thankfully he was right-handed, but he couldn’t eat and defend himself at the same time.

 

“Where is Derek?” Tom asked to change the subject, and to buy some time so that he could push himself up and into a sitting position in a dignified – and not helpless – way.

 

“Training Russell in the basement. He usually doesn’t bother with new wolves until the full moon, but your boyfriend has some serious aggression problems that need to be nipped in the bud,” Stiles informed him with a casual look of indifference. “Russell was fine until Derek told him that Max would hunt you down even if you left Beacon Hills – because wolves tend to become obsessed with their prey – and then the friendly neighborhood park ranger got all psycho-pissed. He even put his claws through the refrigerator.”  

 

“Russell isn’t my…,” Tom began, but then stopped. What was Russell to him? Although they hadn’t gotten off to the best start, they had grown quite close over the past year or so. They spent the weekends together, going off into the wilderness to fish, or hanging out at the house that Russell had built from the floorboards up. Well, Russell did most of the fishing and other outdoor activities while Tom sat back and enjoyed his company. Tom was more of a practical, technologically advanced guy, whereas Russell was all rustic and spur of the moment. Those qualities were only two of many reasons why Tom found the park ranger to be highly likable and fun to be around. And there hadn’t been a single holiday that they hadn’t celebrated together since the previous Thanksgiving. Russell was kind and compassionate, and went out of his way to make Tom feel welcome and _normal_ , even going so far as to protect him from some of the more vindictive rumors in town. Tom had grown accustomed to being able to rely on the strong, confident park ranger, with his warm brown eyes and infectious sense of humor. If he were to be completely honest with himself, he had been longing for a little something deeper with Russell, but his inexperience with men had left him confused and unsure about the other man’s advances. If he had known what all those dinners had meant to Russell, or what had been implied with the way Russell had been touching him for quite some time now…

 

“Are you sure about that?” Stiles cut into Tom’s train of thoughts, eyeing him rather suspiciously. “Because Russell seems to be under the impression that you’re _his_ to protect and get all snarly over.” Before Tom could respond to that, Stiles plopped himself down onto the bed and abruptly changed the subject. “ _Anyway_ ,” he began in an obvious, singsong voice, “if you need relationship counseling, I’m not your man. I have enough of my own unresolved years of pining and rejection to get over. I actually came in here to talk about what happened to me back at the Glades. I figured that I may as well do it while your boyfriend is chained up in the basement so that he can’t get in the way again.”

 

“ _What?!”_ Russell was _chained up_ in the basement?! Was Stiles joking? Tom couldn’t tell when the sheriff’s smartass of a son was aiming for a good laugh or being serious.

 

“Chill out,” Stiles said smoothly in an attempt to calm the panic that he’d caused Tom to feel. “Nobody is going to get hurt… _much_ … It’s kind of like a rite of passage for wolves. They get taken over by a kind of bloodlust on a full moon and need to work extra hard to not let all that testosterone tempt them into killing or eating people. And yes, I know what you’re going to say. _The full moon is another week away._ Some wolves that suffered from anger management problems before being bitten need extra attention.”

 

“Russell’s temper isn’t _that bad_.” Except that it really was. Although Tom instinctively felt the need to stand up for his best friend, he couldn’t help but remember the various occasions he’d witnessed the park ranger lashing out at someone. Usually, Russell was the kindest, most caring person in the world, but he did have a short fuse. Two things that set him off really fast were criminal injustice and tampering with the Glades. However, Tom had never seen Russell as furious as he had been last night. Russell had literally died to protect him. If that cretin Max hadn’t inadvertently given Russell the bite, the one person that Tom secretly loved more than anyone else in his life would have been taken from him. And any potential their relationship could have had beyond friendship would have ended with the bittersweet kiss that Russell had given him with his dying breath.

 

“Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that,” Stiles chuckled. “He’s worse than Liam and wilder than Malia, which is kind of saying a lot. Getting turned only amplifies the aggression, so you’re going to have to get used to the random outburst and constant need to damage property.”

 

“I don’t think that it’s polite to talk behind his back like this,” Tom protested, not wanting to say a single bad word about Russell, even if some of it might be true.

 

“Loyalty is a must for a wolf’s mate,” Stiles nodded approvingly.

 

“You came in here with questions,” Tom cut in before Stiles could begin teasing him about how backwards and proper his manners were.

 

“I ask, you eat. Derek will throw a hissy fit if he discovers that you ate his meat pie cold. Same goes for the tea. It’s one of those blends that tastes best hot. His words, not mine.”

 

“I guess after all you’ve experienced, this won’t come off sounding as ludicrous as I once thought it was,” Tom said with a heavy sigh. He already knew what it was that Stiles wanted to ask, so he decided to just come out and say it before he lost the nerve. “We’ve only just recently come to call our people _hybrids_. Well, Russell came up with the name… At the time, I was in no position to challenge him on it.”

 

“Okay, so I’m a hybrid,” Stiles said in an agreeable tone. “That’s cool. So, what is a hybrid and why do I get the feeling that I’ve just been initiated into some secret sect?”

 

“Hybrids are a combination of their original human form, memories, and personality, and some sort of yet-to-be-indentified alien DNA. We have the ability to stay underwater for long periods of time, are more resilient to viruses and bacteria, and heal at a faster rate than regular humans. Some of us are reborn with sharper senses, while others don’t take to the changes very well and become unstable. Every hybrid is unique, but we all feel the need for self-preservation and survival on an equal level. That is why I am assuming you haven’t shared your personal observations with either your father or Derek.”

 

“Yeah… that sounds about right,” Stiles replied with a mystified look in his eyes. “I have this weird feeling in my gut that talking about this with anyone else is taboo or something.”

 

“It used to be that way in Homestead… until an insane hybrid named Szura led an army of our kind against the human residents of our town. Both sides suffered and now Homestead is filled with nothing but bitterness and mistrust. Russell and I have been trying to keep the peace, as well as prevent the hybrid population from increasing, but this past year has been exhausting.” Tom looked away when the weight of his memories began to drag him down, trying to concentrate on the flavor of Derek’s lukewarm meat pie instead.

 

“That’s sweet. A hybrid / human partnership,” Stiles teased. “Leading by example. That’s great and all, but if you and I are more evolved than the rest of the humans, why would you be trying to stop the hybrid population from increasing? Why not let everyone jump into the water and hop out having some sort of aqua-powered abilities? I mean, look at me!” Stiles swept his hands over his bare arms and the rest of his body in a gesture of amazement. “I haven’t got a single scar on my body, I feel more energetic than I was as a teenager, I no longer need my meds, and I have this incredible confidence that just won me the hot wolf of my dreams! Why would we want to selfishly keep this to ourselves?”

 

For literally a few minutes, Tom said nothing. He knew that Stiles needed to know the truth, but he didn’t want to have to be the one to tell him it. Tom had gone for nearly a decade without knowing what had truly happened to him after his plane had crashed into the Glades – the flight that he had been the lone survivor of. He had lived every day thanking God for his survival and had optimistically gone about every moment after with a greater appreciation for life, wanting nothing more than to give back what he had been blessed with. When Russell had thrown the truth in his face, Tom’s perfect little fantasy had been completely destroyed. To say that the experience had been traumatic, especially given his unresolved feelings for the park ranger at the time, would have been an understatement. How could he do the same thing to Stiles?

 

“Tom.” Stiles set his mouth in a firm line and leaned in closer. “I live in a town filled with monsters, alien portals, and curses, remember? Whatever it is, I can take it.”

 

Hoping that Stiles was not saying that just for the sake of saying it, Tom pushed aside his tray and looked directly into the young deputy’s stern face. “There are glowing orange aliens in the water surrounding the Glades,” he began. “They are opportunists and will snatch any human foolish enough to enter the waters, especially during a hurricane when their numbers increase. The process of converting a human into a hybrid is very painful and traumatic, although most hybrids aren’t able to recall it…”

 

“But I’m guessing you’re one of the few who can?”

 

Ignoring the question, Tom got straight to the point. “Stiles, your human body was not miraculously cured of whatever illness you may have been suffering from, nor were your scars repaired in the water. Your original human body was cloned and merged with the DNA of one of the orange aliens. Essentially… you were murdered before you were recreated.”

 

“Holy shit,” Stiles said softly. He said that and nothing else as his shoulders drooped forward heavily and a deep crease of worry appeared between his eyebrows.  Slowly, he fixed his insightful gaze on Tom, looking at him as if really seeing him for the first time.


	9. Chapter 9

After a very long and seriously formal chat in Tom’s room, Stiles was itching for a change of scenery. While he had appreciated how forthcoming the sheriff had been with the long and ugly history of both the hybrids inside and outside of Homestead, he’d had enough by the time Tom got onto the subject of Szura. A brief description of the militant hybrid had been sufficient for Stiles to come to the conclusion that Szura had been a total asshole. Why had it taken so long for Tom to see the truth? While trusting people in general and showing others the benefit of the doubt wasn’t necessarily a bad trait, allowing himself to be so easily manipulated and lied to made Tom seem a little maladjusted to the world. Somewhere along the line Stiles had also realized why Russell was having such a difficult time getting into Tom’s pants. Despite the fact that Tom was obviously madly in love with Russell, the hybrid continued to naively believe that the park ranger couldn’t possibly be interested in him. What the heck was up with that? Stiles could feel the park ranger’s lust for Tom from a mile away! But getting the sheriff to open up was like trying to pry open a clam shell with a toothpick.

 

_Good luck, Russell, my man. You’re going to need it!_

 

A few doors down the hallway, Stiles found the distraction that he’d been dying to track down all night – Derek.    

 

Derek’s bedroom door was inconsistent with the rest of the doors on the second floor. For one thing, it was made from a different type of wood – something darker, heavier, and a lot grainier. Not that Stiles knew anything about wood, or carpentry, but he could kind of guess that it had come at an unreasonable price. How did he know that? Perhaps because attempting to knock on that solid block of wood and hearing nothing but a mild tap of his knuckles in the center of it had given him an estimate of its cost. If Derek lived alone, why had he needed to install such a formidable barrier to his sleeping quarters? It wasn’t like he needed to worry about blocking out a family member’s loud music at night. And who was there to invade his privacy? Well, Stiles wouldn’t have minded sneaking inside to do a bit of scavenging inside the wolf’s comfy den. Had the door not been locked…

 

“Goodnight Stiles,” came Derek’s tired voice from behind that thick, stained black chunk of wood.

 

So Derek’s olfactory senses were still functioning at their usual level. That was reassuring. “Derek, your door is stuck on something,” Stiles called out innocently as he tried to twist open the doorknob. “This is a serious fire hazard, you know! What if there’s an earthquake, or a tornado, and nobody can get to you in time?”

 

“It isn’t stuck, Stiles. It’s locked.”

 

According to Derek’s tone of voice, that should have been the end of the conversation. Of course Stiles knew that the door was locked, but he wasn’t going anywhere until he checked up on his new love interest. Stiles couldn’t allow Derek to brood and rehash over the way he’d been assaulted and tormented – all alone – much like what Tom was doing in that crummy bedroom down the hall. What kind of quasi-boyfriend would he be if he left Derek all by himself after the ordeal he’d been through?

 

From a young age, Stiles had always had a weak spot for two types of creatures. One being attractive things that he would never be worthy of attaining – fantastical things like unicorns and faeries that didn’t exist in the first place. And the other just so happened to be hurt and lost souls that actually required his intervention. Tom just wasn’t his type, but the sheriff did fit into the second category, which was why Stiles felt nothing but sympathy for him. After finishing up their conversation on hybrids, and further speculating on a connection between the rain and Stiles’s healing abilities, Stiles had made an attempt to get Tom to open up and confide in him. He would’ve been a complete asshole not to have tried, especially seeing as how the sheriff was so on edge that he was bound to accidentally shoot himself with that loaded gun during the night. However, the other hybrid had either been wary of completely trusting him – and who could blame him after the way Szura had used him? – or wasn’t the sharing type, because Tom had shut down his therapeutic line of questioning before it had become too invasive. And that was how Stiles had wound up outside Derek’s bedroom door. Derek he could help because a) Stiles loved Derek, and b) there was no way that the wolf kissed anyone that he didn’t love back.

 

When Stiles had first been introduced to Derek, he had immediately moved the wolf to the top of the _attractive_ – but too good for Stiles – creature list. That had made him want the wolf even more because Stiles was a glutton for punishment and liked to set himself up for failure. And nothing screamed failure louder than a gawky, but sexually confident, teenager trying to win the affection of a cool, handsome stranger who drove around in fast cars, wore leather jackets and tight jeans, and made anatomically-correct action figures look disproportionate. But when Stiles had discovered that all the wolf’s sarcasm and standoffish behavior was actually protecting a much more vulnerable interior… Nothing could have pried Stiles’ interest off of Derek after that. A temporary rift between Scott – Stiles’ old best friend – and Derek hadn’t been able to dull his infatuation, and neither had witnessing the wolf’s full transformation. On the contrary, that had made Stiles want Derek all the more. Part-time lover, part-time exotic pet. Who could ask for anything more?

 

“Don’t make me cite fire safety regulations to you, Derek. Because I will if you leave me no choice.” And yes, he truly was capable of boring people to tears with the amount of useless knowledge that he had picked up in college.

 

“Fire safety doesn’t apply to my bedroom.”

 

“Just out of curiosity, did you check the zoning laws for this neighborhood? I guess you would’ve had to in order to register your business… You did register it, didn’t you? And you served Russell whisky, which would mean that you must also have a liquor license…”

 

As if by magic, the door to Derek’s bedroom flew open and he was met with a very grumpy looking wolf. A shirtless wolf with nicely defined muscles and washboard abs that had been designed for jeans or underwear commercials, where the ads didn’t really focus on the product.

 

Whereas Tom had looked nervous and jumpy as hell when Stiles had intruded on his sleeping space, in contrast, Derek looked completely anchored, as if nothing was bothering him at all. For anyone who didn’t really know Derek, they might have assumed that he’d already forgotten last night’s incident, but Stiles was good at reading people. And he was superbly talented at reading Derek. The wolf was agonizing over the prospect of being dragged into another unhealthy, psychotic relationship with another dominant partner. Only this time it would be against his will. Stiles had thought that nothing could have compared to what Derek had suffered under Kate’s _ownership_ of him, but Jayce and his pack had taken the concept of immorality to a whole new level.

 

“I served Russell an Irish coffee,” Derek informed Stiles, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed in front of his chest, and his feet planted firmly on the polished floorboards that led into his bedroom.

 

“Which contained whisky.” Stiles made as if to reach for Derek’s chest, which caused the wolf to cautiously back away, giving Stiles all the leeway he needed to sneak into the master bedroom. “I thought you said you renovated this room,” he said in disappointment when he caught sight of the arrangement of antique furniture and drab textiles that Derek had been adamant on hiding.

 

“Come on in,” Derek replied with plenty of sarcasm, closing the door and locking it behind Stiles to ensure that no one could come in after him. Before Stiles could speak, Derek beat him to it. “I overheard you calling Tom a _stabilizing force_ as I was coming up the stairs. Care to explain what that means?”

 

“You overheard that?” Stiles gave a forced laugh at Derek’s bald-faced lie. There was no way that the wolf could have casually overheard that because Stiles had barely breathed the term after Tom had whispered it to him from where he’d been sitting, less than a few centimeters away. “You must’ve been pressed up against the door to have heard _that_.”

 

Funny enough, Derek didn’t even bother to deny that that’s what he had been doing. “And then you said that you needed to keep Tom close. Close for what? What were you doing in his room for the past twenty minutes?”

 

Holy crap! Was Derek implying that he was jealous of the time that Stiles had spent with Tom? He couldn’t actually believe that Stiles would want to sample the goods anywhere else after he’d already committed himself to a one-wolf relationship. Stiles could have done himself a huge favor and alleviated Derek’s concerns by just coming out and confessing that he was a clone being guided by the stabilizing force for the hybrids – namely Tom, but he just couldn’t get past the _clone_ idea. And if he was having problems with it, how would Derek react to such a catastrophic announcement? How was he supposed to explain that being around Tom – a hybrid who believed in a peaceful coexistence with unchanged humans – seemed to tame some angry fire inside of him that would have otherwise continued to burn unchecked? He felt more in control and like his old self when Tom was nearby, but that was it. Derek’s fears, while cute and amusing, were completely unfounded.

 

“Tom was talking me out of going after Jayce by myself,” Stiles answered calmly, because it wasn’t entirely untrue. “Afterwards, I was just complimenting him on how level-headed and peaceable he is. You weren’t really worried that he and I might be…?”

 

“No,” Derek said simply, but curtly enough to shut Stiles up. “I’m just tired.”

 

“From training Russell.” Stiles had no trouble filling in the blanks for himself. Having to lock up a new wolf before the full moon, after many years of inaction, must have drained Derek of any energy that he’d had to spare. Derek had nothing but bad memories from his reign as an alpha and wanted nothing more to do with the role, that much Stiles could tell without needing to pry it out of the wolf. Perhaps there were also complications due to Russell’s age and the violent way that he had been turned?

 

Derek’s thick eyebrows bunched together in consternation and his lips pulled down into a half-frown, half-snarl, before he began to pace. Now this was something that Stiles had never seen before!

 

“No, Stiles. I didn’t train Russell.”

 

“But…”

 

“I took him down to the basement, put him into a set of shackles that should have been strong enough to hold even Erica on a bad day, and was about to give him _the lecture_ when he suddenly broke free.”

 

“Huh,” Stiles grunted in disbelief. “You forgot to lock the shackles?”

 

“No, you moron. He snapped them in two _after_ I’d locked them.”

 

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Stiles grabbed onto Derek by his shoulders and pulled him close, scanning that delectably hot body for any new claw or bite marks.

 

For a second, Derek appeared to be more unsettled by Stiles touching him than explaining what had become of the park ranger with aggression issues. “He barely looked at me. He just shook off the restraints and headed for the stairs complaining that the smell of Tom was messing with his concentration. But before he took off, I got a good look at his eyes. They were glowing, Stiles.”

 

“Don’t they usually glow?”

 

“Purple,” Derek added.

 

“Purple? What does that mean?”

 

“I have no idea. I have never seen a wolf with purple eyes. Have you?”

 

“Uh uh. Green, yes. Blue, yes. Red, alpha yes. Purple… Sounds like someone’s been messing with their color combinations. Do you know where he went?”

 

“I thought that he went after Tom, which is why I may have been a little too close to the door.”

 

“Pressed up against it,” Stiles repeated. “Does it really matter where Russell went? You said that he’s been helping you heal so he probably doesn’t have any malicious intent. And he’s not with Tom… at the moment… so you can cross off acting on raging wolf hormones.”

 

“Give it time,” Derek muttered, still doing nothing to invite Stiles closer, but also doing nothing to get rid of him either.

 

“Why don’t we let Russell train Russell and forget the whole outlandish idea that I would want to be with anyone but you,” Stiles suggested in a highly flirtatious manner. He earned himself a hint of a smirk for that remark, which led him to believe that not even Derek was impervious to his corny charm. Stroking both hands down Derek’s arms, Stiles led him to an ornately carved bench at the foot of the bed and had him sit there. The cushions looked really old on it, as if they had withstood generations of use, and a good many backsides sitting on it. Had Derek just adopted the haunted furniture that the previous residents had left behind? “Uh… Derek, what’s with all this weird furniture and the creepy pillars attached to your bed? This isn’t one of those canopy beds, is it? Where are the dusty curtains? I thought that you only kept your own stuff in here.”

 

Any normal person would have been offended by Stiles’ remark, but Derek had apparently been anticipating such a comment because he took it in stride. “This _is_ my stuff. It took me years to hunt down and repossess my great great grandfather’s bedroom suite, my great great great grandmother’s tea set, and my sister’s doll collection.”

 

“Wait a minute! Do you mean that same doll collection that’s freaking Tom out in the other room?!”

 

There was no mistaking the impish smile that lifted Derek’s lips as he verified Stiles’ suspicions. “I didn’t say one way or the other who they had belonged to. You and Tom were the ones who went and jumped to the conclusion that they had belonged to the murdered family. I may have kept their furniture but everything else got donated or put in the trash. I may have been hard up for a few spare beds and bookshelves but I’m not a psychopath, Stiles.”

 

 _But your sister was also murdered, by your psycho uncle no less, so those dolls are still cursed goods._ Although Derek might not have seen it that way.

 

Stiles hadn’t realized that Derek had been keen on reconnecting with his roots, especially ones that far back. To think that most of what decorated the bedroom had belonged to Derek’s ancestors! Thinking that this was a golden opportunity not to be missed, and wanting to keep Derek’s mind focused on something positive, Stiles sat down beside him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and prepared himself for some nostalgia. “Was your great great grandfather a wolf, too?”

 

Derek glanced at Stiles with a pleased expression, showing pure delight that Stiles was showing an interest in his family history, and not pushing him in the direction of the bed, which was something that he wasn’t currently in the mood for. “Yes, he was. Everyone in my family was, as far back as my mother was able to trace.”

 

“So where did you find all this stuff?”

 

“The bedroom suite I traced to a small village in Germany, the tea set I had some trouble getting through customs in Japan, and I found some odds and ends in Sweden, Africa, and Brazil. Getting my hands on my mother’s jewelry collection probably gave me the most stress.”

 

“Why? Was it in Egypt or the Himalayas?” Because what could be more stressful than having to travel to Africa to retrieve a few token heirlooms?

 

“Worse than that. It was in my uncle’s safety deposit box.”

 

“Well then, that had to have been awkward to get into.”

 

“You have no idea.”

 

“So…,” Stiles began conversationally as he patted down a corner of the mattress, “…do you need help testing out your new bed?”

 

“Stiles!” Derek warned, but still let Stiles lean in to kiss him. In fact, Stiles was quite sure that Derek had been waiting for that kiss all night because the wolf pushed up against him a bit too eagerly the moment Stiles pulled him closer to deepen it. As they kissed, Stiles wondered why he hadn’t just come out and asked Derek out on a date ages ago. They had a fantastic chemistry together and made kissing seem like a harmonic, effortless melding of the lips and tongues. And Derek was so warm and receptive… “You’ve changed,” Derek murmured when Stiles let up for a moment to let the wolf catch his breath.

 

“So you’ve said before,” Stiles teased. “Going to college toughened me up. And working out has made me look a lot less wimpish in a short-sleeved shirt.” To illustrate his point, Stiles flexed in order to show Derek how the hard muscles in his arms were coming along.

 

“You never looked wimpish,” Derek scoffed. “But that isn’t what’s different.”

 

“My hair is three centimeters longer than it was before.”

 

“No… That’s not it.”

 

Stiles froze when Derek moved in closer so that his fuzzy bearded jaw rubbed against Stiles’ cheek. And then Derek was sniffing him. Not so much in a wolfish way, but inhaling deeply all the same. Would he be able to smell the alien aura that Stiles was now cloaked in? Stiles hadn’t considered the possibility that Derek might be able to detect the changes in him with his enhanced senses. What if Derek wasn’t able to recognize Stiles’ scent at all? What if the idea of being with a clone scared him off?   Stiles was so beside himself with worry that Derek might discover the truth that he began to sweat and nervously fidget, waiting for his wolf to recoil in disgust. But that never happened.

 

After a brief moment of sniffing, Derek pulled back and gave Stiles a puzzled look. “You look the same and smell the same… but something is different.”

 

Relieved that Derek hadn’t been able to locate the source of his suspicions, Stiles grabbed the wolf by his impressive biceps and pushed him back against the bed at his back, smiling evilly as he drank in the sight of the flushed wolf at his disposal. “You’re right. Now that I have you everything is different.” He then kissed away any other random thoughts that Derek might have wanted to express that could potentially ruin their time together.

 

* * *

 

Having lived in the Glades for most of his adult life, Russell was pretty much accustomed to a wide range of smells. Everything from plant life to motor fuel, from gruesome rotating propeller injuries oozing blood to rat poison, and even death. And now his sense of smell had been multiplied many times in strength, making it so powerful that he could smell things that weren’t even within his range of sight. He could also identify the scents of people that he was familiar with, being able to track Derek, Stiles, or Tom throughout the house. Well, mainly Tom because that’s the only person that he was currently interested in knowing the whereabouts of.

 

Earlier on, Derek had tried to instill the importance of discipline and striving hard to keep his wolf side subdued into his head. That’s why Russell had spent over two hours running through the night. He’d hoped that using up all of his excess energy would calm the carnal instincts racing through his blood. But at the end of an exercise routine that normally would’ve left him winded and suffering from muscle spasms, he’d discovered that he was no longer affected by his old limits. He could’ve pushed himself further and harder, but had found himself lured back to the café and up to the second floor instead, where Tom’s scent was the strongest.

 

Russell had always imagined that there was something different about Tom that wasn’t visible to the naked eye, something that could be identified without scientific tests. Sure, Tom’s hemoglobin count was twice that of a normal human being’s, making his blood composition similar to that of a whale’s, but shouldn’t there be an easier method of illuminating the presence of hybrids? Maybe animals with simpler minds and sharper senses could differentiate between an unchanged human and a hybrid? But no. Russell had spent several hours in Tom’s presence since last night, trying to smell something different about him, but the hybrid smelled as human as everyone else. Having been turned into a werewolf hadn’t altered the way in which Russell perceived Tom either. The only thing it had done was make the scent of Tom all the more delicious and irresistible. To hell with self restraint! Before the end of the night, Russell was going to have himself a taste, whether it be a tentative lick or something a lot more hands on.

 

As Russell approached the last bedroom door at the end of the hallway, he noticed that there was no light source emanating from underneath the spacious gap between the bottom of the door and the decaying floorboards. That didn’t mean that Tom was asleep inside, only that the hybrid wanted the others to believe that he wasn’t awake so that they would leave him alone. Even from a distance, Russell could hear Tom’s elevated heart rate and quick shallow breathing. He never should have left Tom by himself, especially not after what had been done to him. Screw the werewolf bible on proper etiquette and keeping a distance from loved ones while accosted by a bloodlust! While he had been down in the basement listening to Derek preach to him about using his powers responsibly, Tom had been cowering inside his borrowed nightmare of a room, obviously too afraid to sleep.

 

Not bothering to knock, Russell strode up to the door, turned the doorknob and pushed the door inwards. A millisecond later, he heard the unmistakable metallic click of a trigger being compressed, as well as smelled gunpowder. Before Tom could fire the weapon at him, Russell launched himself into the far corner of the room, following the sheriff’s scent before he actually caught sight of him, and disarmed him before any damage could be done.

 

Tom gave a sound of fright and jerked back and away from Russell, pressing himself against the wall tighter in an attempt to escape whatever manner of beast had come after him. Unlike Russell, Tom could not see clearly in the dark, but he was having no trouble making out the glowing purple energy that Russell’s eyes were filled with.

 

“Tom, it’s me.” Russell crouched down in front of his best friend and returned the gun, handle first, with the safety engaged. That standard issue weapon would do very little to protect Tom against werewolves that could move as fast as Russell, but if it made Tom feel safer then he may as well hold onto it. “What if Derek had entered instead of me?” Russell asked gently, crouching down in front of Tom to get a good look at him. He didn’t use Stiles as an example, knowing that Tom would’ve been able to sense a fellow hybrid intruding on his personal space before that person came within shooting range.

 

“Derek always knocks,” Tom replied after an awkward pause.

 

Finding Tom huddled on the floor, in a corner of a drafty room decorated with relics of the dead, terrified of becoming some bastard alpha wolf’s bitch, stoked Russell’s rage like nothing else could. Although sensitive to how others perceived him and how he was mistreated, Tom never revealed his feelings to others. He hid everything so well, choosing to use his time and energy to help others and promote peace, instead of feeling sorry for himself. Occasionally, he would slip up and show signs of fatigue and sorrow, lacking the motivation to carry on. But even then, Tom was careful not to let his emotions affect anything other than his tone of voice or his eyes. Those were the two things that the hybrid could not fully control. Whenever Tom began to sound depressed, or whenever those beautiful blue eyes happened to look lackluster, Russell made sure to pay extra attention to him. Taking him out for dinner, inviting him down to the lake for a fishing trip, anything to remind Tom that he was not alone in the world. And if one day Tom were to catch on that Russell’s interest in him was now purely romantic, so be it. Although… if that kiss hadn’t made Russell’s intentions perfectly clear already, there was no hope for Tom at all.

 

“Do you want to come up off the floor? You’re cold,” Russell pointed out, greatly disturbed to witness Tom completely unraveled before him.

 

“I’m fine, Russ.”

 

“You’re shivering and your arm is covered in goose bumps,” Russell pointed out. Tom’s left arm was still in the sling, which meant that sitting pressed up against wall like that had to be pretty uncomfortable, if not painful.

 

“You can see that in the dark?” Tom asked in amazement.

 

“My eyes are glowing, aren’t they?” Russell asked lightly. “Let me help you back to the bed.” He got an arm around Tom’s back and helped him up, sighing in relief when his best friend didn’t shy away from him. In fact, since he had entered the room, Tom’s breathing had become a lot steadier and his heartbeat was no longer racing at an unhealthy clip. Grateful that Tom was not afraid of him, Russell guided the hybrid back to the bed and got him under the blankets to warm up. “Why were you on the floor?” Russell asked as he made himself comfortable on the right side of the bed, blocking the window from view.    

 

“The bed is too close to the window,” Tom replied, as if that explained everything.

 

 _And the window won’t keep a werewolf out,_ Russell thought to himself. “Tom, can you do me a favor and put the gun away?” How was Russell supposed to touch Tom if there was a loaded gun between them?

 

“I don’t have claws and fangs like you, but I have never missed a shot,” Tom stubbornly refused.

 

Oh, so Russell’s fangs were showing. He’d been mildly amused to see his reflection in the hallway mirror downstairs on his way back inside from his run. Derek had been extremely worried that he might not adapt well to the transformation, but Russell had yet to see something that shocked him. All it had taken was a few minutes of deep breathing to will the fangs to change back to his regular canines, and his eyes only glowed if he wanted to see in the dark, so he could turn that off, too. Tom’s reaction, or lack thereof, to Russell’s werewolf features was probably more puzzling than Russell’s easy acceptance of what he had been turned into. Why wasn’t Tom more startled by the predator that was now sharing a bed with him?

 

“I’m staying with you tonight, so you won’t be needing the gun.” When Tom cast him a questioning glance, Russell felt a possessive growl building in his chest. It wasn’t his fault that Tom looked good enough to devour and smelled just as enticing. The sheriff’s wavy blondish-brown hair was freshly washed and his chilled skin smelled faintly of coconut oil, which was all the rage in Homestead at the moment. Although the product that Tom was using didn’t have that artificial sugary sweetness to it, because Tom always bought the _good stuff_. Nearly consumed with his desires, Russell felt like giving into his animal urges and just mounting his friend from behind. That would warm Tom up and give Russell the opportunity to taste that coconut flavor on the tip of his tongue. Unfortunately, putting Tom into that position after the way he’d been manhandled by Max would no doubt traumatize the hybrid further, which was not what Russell wanted to do. “Unless you’d rather I left…?” Better to give Tom the option rather than be accused of coercing him into something that he wasn’t comfortable with several hours later.

 

“I’m not afraid of you, Russ,” Tom said bluntly, making a show of placing the gun onto the nightstand, beside a gathering of yet more girlish dolls, in order to put Russell’s fears at ease. “You became a werewolf by protecting me… You _died_ for me,” he emphasized in a deeply emotional voice.

 

Shifting closer so that he could press closely against Tom’s side, Russell began to boldly stroke his fingers through his best friend’s soft locks of hair. “I don’t regret a thing, Tom. I would gladly do it again to keep that mangy piece of trash off of you.” When Tom did nothing to escape him, Russell slid his hand down the hybrid’s face to cup one of his high cheekbones. Tom made a soft sound and his face darkened with color, something that only a wolf would notice in the dark, but still he did not pull away. So, for the third time that night, Russell pressed his fingers tightly against Tom’s flesh, willing the hybrid’s pain and fear into his own body. Earlier on, he’d done the same for Derek, but he’d been abruptly cut off by whatever force was imposing a limit on his powers. With Tom, however, he could siphon off his discomfort again after a break of an hour or so. There had to be a reason why he was able to connect with the hybrid easier than he could the other wolf. “We don’t need to talk about that kiss, do we?”

 

“Only if you didn’t mean it,” Tom replied nervously, his heartbeat now rampant enough that Russell could hear that, too.

 

“Tom,” Russell sighed, “when another man sticks his tongue into your mouth, you can be pretty damn sure that he _means_ it.” Just as Russell was hooking a leg over Tom’s thighs to aggressively pull him in closer, brushing the rough stubble of his beard against the exposed neck by his lips, Tom brought up something that had been on Russell’s mind since the attack.

 

“I don’t know how far we can go before…” Apparently too embarrassed to finish that thought, Tom looked away, hoping that Russell would figure the rest out for himself.

 

 _Before there’s no going back._ When Russell had blindly attacked Max in order to get him off of Tom, he had done so in a panic, worrying that something irreparable had been done to his best friend. Because aside from raping him, forcing a bond on Tom would have been just as damaging. “I’ve studied hybrids in depth, Tom, but there has never been a case of a hybrid male mating with another male. For all I know, we might end up bonding just by kissing.” And for Russell, that would not be such a bad thing. “I know the risks and I wouldn’t take them if I didn’t love you.” If he were to have such a permanent connection with Tom, he would be able to better understand the hybrid’s thoughts and emotions, as well as know where to find him if he were ever in danger. The link between a hybrid and his mate was something powerful and mysterious that defied science. Russell had seen firsthand what such a bond was capable of. Russell wanted – no, _needed_ – that connection with Tom, because in Russell’s eyes, Tom already belonged to him. Tom was _his_ – end of story.

 

“You love me…” Tom repeated, sounded choked up and unsure of himself.

 

 _This_ was what had kept Russell from actively pursuing Tom. At first he had thought that Tom might have been too innocent or naïve to accept his advances. But that had never been the problem. He had always known deep down that Tom wanted a lot more out of their friendship than Russell had given him, but it had been Tom’s own feelings of worthlessness that had ultimately kept them apart. To think that Tom doubted how much Russell cherished him, how much he _longed_ for him… But the evidence was right there in Tom’s eyes and his tone of disbelief.

 

“How long have we been having dinner together on Saturday nights?” Russell asked instead of reinforcing his feelings for his friend.

 

“I don’t know…”

 

“How long, Tom?” Russell insisted, doing his best to keep the irritation out of his voice.

 

“Since the Saturday before Thanksgiving last year,” Tom answered automatically.

 

 _So you do remember._ It just wasn’t like Tom to not keep track of important facts like that. “And how many times have you paid for dinner on one our nights out?”

 

“You wouldn’t let me,” Tom replied defensively.

 

“If I had let you, it wouldn’t have been a _date_ ,” Russell pointed out firmly. “And when you come over to my place to watch a movie and conveniently fall asleep on my couch, who do you think covers you up afterwards? And no, I don’t go upstairs to my own bed to sleep. I sit on that raggedy-old, piece of crap armchair opposite the couch and watch you like some creepy stalker. And do you remember that scarf that you misplaced last winter? The yellow and burgundy tartan one?” Russell grinned when Tom’s eyes widened, having obviously picked up on an emerging pattern. “It’s draped over the headboard of my bed, but don’t ask me what I do with it. So yes, Tom, I love you. I should’ve just come out and told you a long time ago, but you haven’t made it easy for me. Always worrying that I couldn’t possibly love you because of the fact that you’re a hybrid. Well, now I’m a werewolf, so I think that that levels the playing field, don’t you?” When Tom swallowed hard and leaned into Russell’s touch, Russell thought that perhaps something good would come out of their trip to Beacon Hills after all.

 

“I’ve loved you for a long time, Russell,” Tom finally confessed. “I wouldn’t want to be bonded to anyone else.”

 

Just hearing Tom admit that his feelings were reciprocated was all the encouragement Russell needed to claim the hybrid’s mouth in a passionate kiss. Unlike the kiss that he’d initiated as his life had been slipping away from him, this one was a lot more uncontrollable and demanding. Russell growled low in his throat when Tom moaned and began to kiss him back, grabbing onto the back of his neck to hold him in place. Before long, their kiss became hot and desperate, swirling with a torrent of pent-up emotions, which brought back that urge to mount. Or at least rut against Tom in order to alleviate the savage desire that had made his jeans unbearably constrictive.

 

Feeling somewhat guilty for how his jeans were no doubt chafing Tom’s exposed hip, Russell hastily pulled up the hybrid’s pajama pants to protect his skin as he ground against him harder. Being close to Tom often left him feeling deprived, but tonight, even with the kissing and the groping, he was still horny as hell. Did Derek also go through these bouts of heightened sexual arousal? And if so, how did he get through them by himself? Not letting up on the kiss, Russell held Tom down with one hand on the hybrid’s good shoulder while he climbed on top of him. The only thing he could think about was how much he wanted to make Tom _his_ , to initiate the bond that made a hybrid inseparable from his mate.

 

“Russ, wait…”

 

The flesh of Tom’s collarbone tasted like a mixture of salt and coconuts, and he was giving off pheromones that Russell could actually smell. When he began to squirm, Russell held him in place, needing to drink him in some more. It didn’t take much to keep Tom still by clamping down on his hip and shoulder, practically pinning him to the bed so that Russell could have free reign of his body.

 

“Russ, stop!”

 

Startled back to his senses, Russell glanced up at Tom to see that the hybrid’s eyes were wide with fear, and what he’d automatically assumed were pheromones of arousal were actually anything but. But a second ago, Tom had given him permission to go ahead and bond them, what had brought about this unexpected, adverse reaction? “Tom, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as he carefully held the hybrid down to keep him from hurting himself.

 

“Let me up, _please_ ,” Tom pleaded, fighting back harder now that Russell had applied more pressure in order to restrain him.

 

 _Shit!_ A little too late, Russell realized what he had done wrong and how foolish his actions had been. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out as he quickly got off of Tom, releasing the hybrid’s shoulder and hip in response to the panic that he could see building inside the man that he loved. “I wasn’t thinking… I never should’ve held you down like that…” Why the hell hadn’t he taken Derek’s wise advice and stayed the hell away from Tom until the morning? He was not in control of his actions, and if he wasn’t careful, his newly created wolf instincts might end up destroying the relationship with Tom that he coveted so much. “I’m off, okay?” He kept his voice soothing and resisted the temptation to touch Tom again.

 

“Okay,” Tom replied, sounding confused and lost by his own reaction.

 

“I’ll be outside if you need me.” Russell made as if to get off of the bed, but was surprised when Tom grabbed his wrist to prevent him from leaving.

 

“I don’t want you to leave,” Tom said in a strained voice. “Just… please don’t grab me like that again.”

 

“I won’t,” Russell promised, wrapping his arms loosely around Tom in a warm embrace instead. Gradually, he felt the tension ease up in Tom’s arms and shoulders. Although he was grateful that Tom hadn’t kicked him out of the room, Russell couldn’t have been angrier with himself for screwing up like that. “Can we talk about what happened yesterday?” If he could just get Tom talking, perhaps they could work around the trauma that he was silently suffering from.

 

“Not now… Maybe tomorrow…”

 

“Tomorrow then,” Russell agreed, somehow sensing that if Tom had his way, they would never bring the topic up again.

 


End file.
